


But Then Face to Face

by michelel72



Series: Near Point [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michelel72/pseuds/michelel72
Summary: 2014-Jonathan and magically-reconstructed-1985-Jonathan meet in a strange place.  Will they maturely discuss their differences and hug it out, or will they take the long way around?
Series: Near Point [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571716
Comments: 10
Kudos: 4





	1. Imagine Meeting You Here

**Author's Note:**

> General: This follows "Adjusting Masks" and assumes familiarity with both that story and "Sound of Silver". It's darker than the rest of the series.
> 
> Title: Taken from I Corinthians 13:11-12 (Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition).
> 
> Content/Warning Note: Be advised that there is one violent scene in chapter 3. I don't think it's "graphic" enough to qualify for the archive warning, but please use caution. For other content/warning notes, see the End Notes.
> 
> Schedule: I will be posting one chapter per day. I may make small tweaks to later chapters before posting them, but the full story is already written, so I don't expect a writer's-block/rewrite delay.
> 
> Research/feedback: I've tried to do my research on various topics responsibly. I welcome feedback in general; if I've misrepresented anything, I apologize and would like to know (and if I can fix it with minor editing, I will try to do so).
> 
> Character opinions and logic do not represent the author.

Jonathan wakes to find himself on a bland beige couch. He sits up, blinking in confusion.

He's wearing baggy sweats, so — right. Someone used "magic" on his older self, turning him into Jonathan. Jonathan is temporary and not quite real, but he's still here for now. He must be in older-Katie's family room … except …

Except _there's no room_. The couch is in the middle of a colorless, featureless space. Nothing-particular extends in all directions.

He turns and carefully lowers one foot, then the other. They both find what feels like a floor, though he still can't see any difference. The maybe-floor feels sturdy enough, but the lack of any landmarks or reference points is slightly dizzying.

"What's going on?" he asks finally. The sound of his voice doesn't do anything particular, either, neither echoing nor falling into a muffled silence.

"Um. What …?" Just a moment ago, no one else was here, but now a man is standing several feet away. His hair and close-trimmed beard are a lightly greying brown. He's wearing a casual long-sleeved shirt over a t-shirt and jeans, everything in muted colors.

It's Jonathan's older self. Jonathan stands, narrowing his eyes. "Oh. Is this you replacing me?"

Older-him frowns a little. "You mean replacing you _back_? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that was a couple of days ago. So why …" He turns, looking around. "What even is this place?"

What, is Jonathan supposed to know? "More _magic_?" he asks, irritated.

Older-him rolls his eyes, but it looks like that's just because he's annoyed to be here, not at Jonathan specifically. "With my luck? Probably."

They stare at each other for a few seconds.

"So what now?" Jonathan asks finally.

"Why would _I_ know? None of this was my idea." He looks at the couch. "Maybe we're supposed to sit down and discuss our differences and _hug it out_ or something."

They look at each other and then, simultaneously, edge a few inches further apart.

Which is kind of weird, really. Jonathan knows why he wants nothing to do with his older self, but what's older-him's problem?

Regardless, they both consider the couch. "Whoever this is," older-him finally says, "they don't know us at _all_." He turns and starts walking in what looks like a random direction.

Jonathan just lets him go at first. Who wants that guy around? But as the sound of footsteps grows fainter, he realizes he's entirely alone here.

Even the company of older-him has to be better than that.

Ugh, _fine_. Jonathan hurries to catch up.

"I would've come back," older-him says once Jonathan falls into step with him. He sounds apologetic. "I just needed to move around. Lot of desk duty lately, and a lot of sitting around talking about _feelings_ around that."

Jonathan looks over at him in confusion. "You … sit around and talk about feelings?" How are they even the same person?

"By choice? Hell no. When having _you_ take over my life for a few days drives me into a nervous breakdown? Unfortunately, yes."

"What do you — that wasn't my fault!"

"I never said it was," older-him says through clenched teeth. He pulls his hands out of his pockets to cross his arms.

Jonathan glances down at himself. Still in those same old, baggy sweats. He wishes he had his school uniform —

— except he _does_. He almost trips in surprise.

"Hey, no fair," older-him says. "Why do _you_ get to have a tie?" And suddenly he's wearing a dark suit and a tie, the latter patterned in gentle swirls of purple and silver-grey. "Oh, that's better."

"What, you'd really rather be in a suit than jeans?" Jonathan asks, disbelieving. Everybody thinks Jonathan is weird for not minding his school uniform, and older-him is probably just like them. He probably just doesn't want Jonathan to outclass him.

"Yes, actually," older-him says. "The same as you. Since, you know, _I am you_. That's the problem with being all grown up. You have to make up your own uniforms. It's like after-school and weekends but _all the time_."

Jonathan makes a face at that. He doesn't mind casual clothing occasionally, but he likes for his clothes to reflect what he's supposed to be doing. They help get him in the right mindset. He's never really sure what to do with unstructured free time.

"And everyone thinks you should be _happy_ to dress down, so you can't even say anything," older-him continues. Why does he have to sound so _relatable_? "Being patrol was pretty good, because then I had a uniform at work, but basic plainclothes was annoying. Detectives don't have to wear suits, but it's not _too_ weird if we do, so … I do. Pretty much my only chance anymore, unless I can actually make it to _Shabbos_ meals or a seder or something. But that's why I wear the shirt-and-shirt combo when it's not too cold out." His clothes briefly flicker back but soon return to the suit, demonstrating the similar outlines. "It's as close as I can get to what a uniform or a suit feels like without people laughing at me."

Jonathan would almost sympathize, but older-him just had to go mentioning stuff from another faith, didn't he? Jonathan didn't really want to know the answer to this, but it's right there in front of him now. "And _church_ , right?"

— Stained glass shatters overhead, rains down — 

… patters off the huge umbrella older-him is holding over Jonathan's head. Jonathan straightens from his instinctive defensive crouch and looks up at the umbrella. "What …?"

"Didn't want you to get hurt," older-him mutters.

The umbrella isn't covering older-him at all. He's got little bits of colored glass all over him. "But … you —"

Older-him shrugs. "Can't hurt me anymore. Much." He looks annoyed at himself for the addition and turns away. "Anyway. I think I figured this place out."

A sudden swirl of wind carries away the shards of glass and the umbrella. They're standing on a rocky outcrop, overlooking a cascade waterfall. It's forty or fifty feet tall, a moderate stream of water making its way down in slips and sprays. Sightlines are short, with rocky hills all around and dense early-spring-growth trees in most directions.

"Royalston Falls," older-him says. "Midstate, right up near the New Hampshire border. Nice enough, but the drive sucks." He starts moving along the marked trail. It winds up and down among outcroppings, so there are spots where a few rocks have to be used as stairs or a sapling has to be grabbed to manage a steep spot.

Older-him pauses at one point and offers his hand down to Jonathan, after making his way up a tricky bit. Jonathan ignores him and climbs it alone. Older-him just shrugs and keeps going.

After another tricky bit, this one downward, he looks down at his work shoes. "Tonya would kill me if she saw me out here like this. Actually …" He squints a little.

"You're damn right I would," Detective Smith says. She's slightly off the trail, leaning against a tree, arms crossed casually. "Not that this calls for my kind of shoe, either," she says. She's in a suit and sneakers, just as she was when Jonathan first met her. "But they do make hiking shoes, you know. I'm pretty sure they'd set you back a lot less than the bills for a wilderness rescue and a broken ankle."

Older-him is smiling warmly at her. "This has been a test of the emergency partner system. This was only a test. Away with you."

Detective Smith lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "Fine, be that way. Have fun, nature boy." And then she's just gone.

Jonathan stares. " _You_ do magic?"

Older-him looks over at Jonathan, the pleasure at seeing Detective Smith fading to what looks like the politely distant expression Jonathan uses around people he doesn't really like. "Nah. None of this is. Pretty sure we're just inside my head." He looks up at the sky, rich blue through the nearly bare branches. "Apparently when I crack, I go all the way."

A stone wall appears behind him, a Humpty Dumpty shattered in front of it, yolk splattered across the ground like a bloodstain. Cartoon cutouts of Detective Smith and older-him's husband Mark are standing nearby, dressed in Sherlock Holmes outfits, studying the scene with professional curiosity.

Jonathan turns away. That's gross. "Why are you in a suit in the woods anyway?"

"Hm. Good question." Older-him starts walking again. "Not sure how long I'll stay out here, really. Don't think I feel like changing back and forth. I like having lots of pockets. I don't exactly see _you_ changing out of your school uniform."

Jonathan isn't going to be the first one to go casual. He's waiting for older-him to blink first.

"Besides, maybe you'll take me even half seriously if I'm dressed professionally," older-him adds. He doesn't sound very convinced, but he also doesn't sound like he cares very much.

Fat chance anyway. "You like waterfalls?" Jonathan asks. He likes waterways, but he doesn't really know much about waterfalls in particular.

The trail is leveling out, turning into a simple path along a small river or large stream. "They're nice enough," older-him says. "They peak in spring, when the foliage is all _thpbt_ , so they're something to look at. An excuse to get the hell away from the rest of humanity for a few hours. Haven't been here in a long time, though. It's not like Mark can get out here. At least in the autumn we can find accessible overlooks."

The river and woods around them transform into a wide vista of autumn foliage to one side, dense woods on the other. The two of them are standing on a high ridge. The sky is bright, but after a few seconds it clouds over. "Better for the camera," older-him explains. "Longer exposure, richer colors."

Jonathan shoots him a dirty look. He knows _that_ much.

"Or you can use filters," older-him continues. He squints a little again. The clouds clear but the light shifts oddly, making the sky a darker blue and making the tree colors pop. "I actually like the natural look better, but it doesn't capture well."

"What are all these changes for?" Jonathan asks. He doesn't really _mind_ them, but they're confusing and he doesn't like the unpredictability. He's glad now he stuck with his school uniform. At least it's consistent.

"My own amusement. If I have to be crazy, I can at least enjoy the ride." But his expression has nothing to do with enjoying anything. "Trees and flowers and chirping birds." He heads off along a path that follows the ridge.

Jonathan knows that song. He's never liked it. "So you're … you're …"

Jonathan has been sure older-him is pretty awful but never actually thought he would be crazy. But Jonathan has always worried, deep down, that he is himself. Apparently he was right to worry.

Why can't he ever be right about something good?

"Yep!" older-him calls back from a few paces ahead, brittle-bright. "Sure does look like it! There I was, living my _not_ -awful, _not_ -a-tire-fire life, thanks for your vote of confidence on that, by the way. Just doing the best I could with the multiple shitty hands I was dealt —"

"Could you please _not_ curse?" Jonathan asks.

"Why, 'cause you don't _like_ it? Ask me just how much of a flying fuck I give about what you like right now." By the set of his shoulders, older-him has his fists jammed deep in his pockets. "Because I was actually _okay_ before you showed up. No, I wasn't perfect. But I was _trying_ , dammit. But then _you_ —" he whirls to face Jonathan, switching to walking backwards without missing a step "— had to go stirring things up, didn't you? Poking and prodding and making me _look_ at the thing that was actually behind the maybe-we're-crazy that you _think_ our deepest fear is."

Jonathan knows he did ask, but he would _really love_ if older-him would stop talking about that now. And he has no idea what older-him means about the thing behind it.

"Don't know, or don't want to know?" Detective Smith murmurs. But when Jonathan turns his head to look, she's already gone again.

Older-him raises his closed hands. "So I have to look, and _pow_." He snaps both hands open wide, and the landscape around them shivers down into ash. "We all fall down." They're standing still, facing each other in the middle of an ash-grey nothingness. Older-him then spins, arms wide, indicating all the nothing around them. "And apparently, in blundering my way back from that, I knock over the entire display case of crazy on the way anyway."

"I never _asked_ to be here!" Jonathan yells. "I just want to go _home_!"

And he is.

He's _home_. He's in the kitchen, and — "Mom!" He hurries over and hugs her. It's over, whatever all this was is _over_ , he's _home_ —

"Hi, Jonny," she says vaguely, patting him and turning back to the stove. "Go make sure your brother's getting ready for dinner, okay?"

Jonathan blinks, stung. But he can't really explain what happened. Not without sounding — "Oh. Okay."

He backs away a step and turns. He hesitates when he realizes older-him is there, too, looking miserable. Older-him barely even reacts when Chris walks through him as if he's a ghost. "Hey, Squirt," Chris says to Jonathan in passing. "Mom, I can't find —"

And of _course_ Mom brightens up. Of _course_ she turns to actually talk to him. Of _course_ Chris has already forgotten Jonathan is even there.

Older-him moves over by the back door, arms wrapped around himself, and rests his forehead against the wall.

"Chris — Oh, Jonny, there you are." Mary Ellen is coming into the kitchen. "We'll finish your homework after dinner." She doesn't wait for his answer before going over to Chris and handing him a garment. "I fixed it for you this time, but I _know_ you know how —"

They're not even ignoring him. They've all dismissed him, and they're taking even less notice now than ignoring would require. He might as well be just as invisible to them as older-him apparently is.

"You can make them." Older-him doesn't raise his voice, doesn't even lift his head away from the wall, but his words are somehow clear despite the noisy three-way conversation over by the stove.

"Make them … what?"

"Make them care. Make them give a shit you ex— you're here."

With a shuffling of feet, the entire family is suddenly there in the kitchen, Mom-Dad-Mary Ellen-Chris-Katie-Jamie. Every single person is looking at Jonathan with bright eyes and bright smiles.

"Hello, Jonathan," they all say together.

He flinches, because no one ever uses his real name unless he's in trouble. No one ever says it nicely, no matter how much he wishes. It sounds so _wrong_ like this.

"It's so good to see you," they continue in syrupy chorus. "How was your day?" As one, they all tilt their heads slightly in robotically choreographed attention.

Jonathan falls back a step, unnerved. Their eyes remain locked on him.

"Please tell us all about —" and then their voices shift to what sounds like a badly overdubbed recording "— that thing you like to do."

Jonathan presses his hands over his ears. "Stop it."

They go back into their original creepy chorus to continue, "Or perhaps you could tell us more about —" and then more overdubbing for "— that other thing you like to do."

"Stop it, _stop it_."

The kitchen is gone. He's at the local park, next to the water. Older-him is standing next to him.

"Sorry," he mutters. "Tonya makes me watch terrible sci-fi with her when she has a bad day. My point was just that you're not really home. They're all just puppets. Well, mostly. Maybe it depends how close to real you want them to be."

Jonathan wipes his face angrily. "I want them to be _completely_ real."

"Well, they can't be. _Here_ isn't real, as far as I can tell. And anyway, _why_? Did I forget you secretly _liking_ being ignored all the time? Because I've gotta say, I didn't even like watching that, and that was pretty damn mild as far as their ability to fail to notice us goes. You had each one of them notice you at all, which sure doesn't seem like what I remember. I wasn't going to stick around for the actual dinner."

Jonathan can't help wincing. Dinnertime is usually pretty bad. It's like some weird kind of math — the more people are around, the less anyone notices him. If there are more than three or four people around, he doesn't stand a chance.

"No one asked you to stay," he says.

"Yes, fine, I get it, you _can't stand me_ ," older-him says, shifting into a mocking whine for the last few words. "You think I'm so awful. Well, news flash, kid."

Something whooshes in a circle around them, and then some sort of song starts playing from nowhere, percussion and maybe a synthesizer for a bit, then shifting up to add a guitar or something. "What …?"

"Oh. This is maybe a few years after you, I don't know." A movie screen appears over the water, showing a music video set in an old-fashioned kitchen, though chunks are blurry or outright missing. Older-him probably doesn't remember it perfectly. "It's about how the world being a mess isn't _new_."

A voice starts listing old names. "Is that Billy Joel?"

Older-him nods, but he's tapping midair along with the syllables, and then he suddenly half-sings over the song's mention of Joe DiMaggio with " _You made Katie cry_."

The screen and music fade away as Jonathan fights not to blush with shame. "I didn't _mean_ to."

"You still did. I'm not perfect, but neither are you. I'm literally you plus time, dude. I didn't ask for any of the crap we got, but I'm the one who had to learn to live with it after you tapped out. I did my best."

Jonathan sighs and flops down in the grass. After a few seconds, older-him copies him.

Jonathan knew all that, really. He was just so _disappointed_ by the things he heard about his older self's life. But … he was always going to be a disappointment, really. Even to himself.

He sighs again. "We're pretty messed up," he admits.

"... Yeah."

They're quiet for a couple of minutes.

"So why did you bring us here?" Jonathan asks finally.

"... I didn't. You did."

Jonathan sits up. "What?"

"You wanted to be home, so you brought us home. And then you shifted us here after I played puppetmaster and creeped you out." Older-him scowls up at the sky. "I guess it makes sense that I inherited this shitty, haunted old fixer-upper from you. And it's not like I changed the locks or any—"

The space they're in plunges into darkness.


	2. Here There Be Monsters

Older-him starts cursing frantically.

"What's happening?" Jonathan is standing again. He turns, trying to figure out where they are. He can't see much, but everything feels small and cramped around them, confining.

"Nothing, nothing at all, just stay back, fuck fuck _fuck_." Older-him is desperately trying to shove a door closed. Dark, slithering tentacles are sticking out, keeping it from closing. "Stupid word associations. Fuck."

"What _is_ that?" Jonathan cranes his neck, trying to see.

"Nothing you need to know about," older-him pants. "Seriously, stay _back_." A cordon of police caution tape and sawhorses pops up between them. Older-him turns to shove his shoulder against the door, trying to find leverage. His shoes keep slipping.

The things sticking out are the problem. Jonathan can't get close enough to touch them, and he feels a strange revulsion at the idea. But …

He wants a rock, and as he thinks that, there's one in his hand. He's not _great_ at this, but he doesn't need to be. He throws the rock.

It hits one of the tentacles, which makes them all spasm and withdraw in surprise. The door slams shut, so suddenly that older-him slips and winds up sitting on the floor, his back against the door.

"... Oh. Or that. That works." Older-him sits forward but doesn't bother to stand. He seems a lot more exhausted than really makes sense. "Um. Thanks, I guess."

"You can pay me back by telling me what that _was_ ," Jonathan insists.

Older-him clearly does not want to. After several seconds, though, he slumps. "Fine. I guess it doesn't really matter. You know how Katie was trying to tell you that you could have standards? That you didn't have to be grateful just because someone liked you?"

Jonathan makes a face. Yeah, he remembers. He also knows how slim his pickings are and are likely to remain.

Older-him points a thumb back over his shoulder. "That's why."

Jonathan frowns. "Because you dated a tentacle monster?"

Older-him snorts. "No." He adds in a mutter, "Felt like it, though," before going back to his regular speaking volume. "This place is built on metaphors and weird associations. That's part of why I always worried I was crazy. And, hey, guess I was right all along! But this …" He looks up at Jonathan, pleading. "Do I really have to?"

It's not like there's anything Jonathan can do to force him. He says, "Yes," anyway.

Older-him slumps further. "I was alone too long. We were never any good at being alone."

Jonathan nods a little. That … yeah.

"I hated it. I thought there couldn't be anything worse. I didn't know better yet. And then … then I met someone who liked me, actually wanted to spend time with me. Actually paid attention to things I said. Wanted to buy me fancy things, and had _so much_ money that protesting was silly."

He's slumping even further, voice losing energy.

"Wanted to replace all my old, cheap, tacky things." He sighs. His voice dulls more. "Wanted to put them all in the trash where they belonged. Wanted me not to be so embarrassing. Wanted me not to talk about things I didn't understand. Made sure to point out when I was wrong so I could shut up."

His eyes are going blank and empty.

"Made sure I knew just how stupid I was. Reminded me how boring I was, how no one cared about my stories or opinions."

Jonathan gets enough of _that_ every single day. Why would he ever spend time with someone who just gave him a bunch more of it? He scowls and looks harder.

Something is moving across older-him's chest.

"Told me I was remembering things wrong, said I was forgetting plans we made. Confused me by changing plans all the time so I never knew what was right. So I was always wrong."

Jonathan needs more light. It grows in response, but only slightly, resisting him.

A single dark tentacle has slipped its way through the crack under the door. It's slithered its way around and up across older-him's chest. The tip has crept up to the back of his neck, where it's shaped itself into a shadowy hand. The hand is resting across the back of older-him's neck, possessive.

"Knew exactly how to push so I would take one more drink, and one more drink, and mess up again." Older-him is whispering now. "I was always, always wrong." 

Jonathan moves around for a better look, absently brushing the caution tape aside and back to nonexistence. If he could just do something about that one tentacle … he knows how to fight, but he doesn't think punching it will help, and he doesn't dare touch it directly anyway.

"I was wrong and worthless and stupid and embarrassing and lucky anyone would waste time on me and had better be grateful …"

Jonathan wants a weapon, so he has a sword. He shrugs. He wouldn't normally know how to use it, but he decides he does here. This isn't exactly a real sword fight. He chops it down onto the tentacle.

The side by the door yanks itself back. The end draped over older-him flakes away into nothing.

Older-him said Jonathan was the one who brought them both home, but then he "played puppetmaster" and took over. Two can play that game. Jonathan decides the door is one side of a box — no, a safe, fully locked.

Then he brings to mind the opening sequences of the movies Emma had him watch. He backs up a few steps, runs forward to jump on top of the safe, and bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, _squish_. He staggers just a little as he steps away from the now-flattened safe.

Older-him is staring, still dazed. "Shouldn't run with a sword," he mumbles. "Or … trampoline …"

A blond-haired figure crouches down behind him and puts his hands on older-him's upper arms, supportive and bracing, as he leans in to murmur something in older-him's ear.

Older-him suddenly flails to his feet, swiping at his jacket and frantically rubbing at the back of his neck. The blond guy is gone. A torrent of water abruptly pours down on older-him for several seconds before disappearing, and a highly localized windstorm dries him again. He shakes himself out vigorously, somehow ending up clean and dry and combed by the end of all that.

"And the moral of the story," he growls, "is that there's actually something worse than being alone." He goes over to the flattened safe and balls it up. "Stand back."

Jonathan does, but older-him gestures for Jonathan to move a few more paces back. Then he suddenly has a baseball bat, and they're standing on the side of a tall hill that is somehow surrounded by flat farmland. He tosses the balled-up former-safe into the air and swings the bat _hard_ , sending the ball flying off into the far, far distance.

"And _stay_ fucked off, asshole!" he calls after it. He turns to Jonathan, hesitates, reluctantly opens his mouth … and then does a double-take. "Wait, what's with the sword? We're not Gryffindor. We're Hufflepuff." His tie shifts over into a vaguely mustardy yellow with black stripes as he says that last word.

"What are those?" Jonathan asks.

"Oh. They're from a bunch of books. They made movies from the books."

A movie screen appears midair, showing a dark-haired boy pulling a sword from a … dirty bag? … that isn't nearly big enough to fit it. Possibly taking advantage of the slight distraction, older-him's tie shifts back to its original, nicer pattern as he continues his explanation.

"Kid goes to a boarding school to learn how to be a wizard. The boarding school splits the kids into four 'houses', and people who read the books or saw the movies like to figure out which one they would be in. There's Gryffindor for the brave ones, Ravenclaw for the smart ones, Slytherin for the ambitious ones, and Hufflepuff for … well, technically, whoever's left."

"Figures," Jonathan mutters. That's been his entire life.

"Yeah. But if you want something nicer to say about it, apparently it's the house that really values hard work, loyalty, and fair play. That's … I always figured there are worse things."

"True." The sword evaporates. Jonathan gestures off in the distance with his newly freed hand. "So, that … um. Guy. You said you were alone before. Was he … I mean …"

"It's not really any of your business," older-him says coolly. Then he winces. "Except I really owe you for that." He sighs and manages a reluctant, "Thank you. And I guess, since it is your future … well, why not. He was the second guy I dated."

That probably fits what older-Katie told Jonathan. "Was that Andy guy the first?"

Older-him smiles. The sunlight is suddenly bright. "Yeah. Andy was great. Still is. I met him back in my patrol days. He straightened me out a lot. Well, so to speak."

Jonathan really doesn't think that's a subject to go joking about. "If he was so great —"

"Watch it."

"I just mean, why didn't you stay together?"

"I don't do casual, if that's what you're asking."

It wasn't, exactly, so Jonathan shakes his head, though that's also a good question to have answered.

"Oh, that. We just … how honest are we being? Polite fiction that I probably mostly believe, or brutal honesty that it's possible I don't actually realize when I'm not stuck in here?" He looks a little surprised that he even said that.

Jonathan just gives him a look.

"I getcha. _¿Por que no los dos?_ Well, the usual story is that we just grew apart and decided we'd rather stay friends than push to stick together and risk that. Brutally honest version …" He sighs and kicks at a nearby tree root. "It's hard to let yourself keep loving someone who's got one foot out the door. Andy _hated_ living in New England. It was killing him — not literally, but who he was. I couldn't ask him to stay, knowing that, and I didn't think I could leave Granddad and my job to follow him. So. I probably started withdrawing, and _then_ we decided the friendship was too important."

He looks out across the farmland. "I really don't think I consciously knew that. Oh, this place is a _riot_."

"That picture," Jonathan says. "He was relieved to be leaving and you didn't want him to go."

"Yep. He got a chance at something perfect for him out in California. We were back to 'just' friends by then, and I really was happy for _him_ , but … well, you know how selfish we are. So then I was alone for a while, because I didn't actually know how to look for anyone serious and long-term while I was deep in my comfy little closet. And then I tripped and fell into _that_ bullshit —" he gestures off in the distance "— which of course eventually blew up in my face. And then I was alone again for a nice long time after, and I was figuring I probably would be forever, because fuck _all_ of that noise."

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Then he smiles gently and the sunlight turns golden. Probably remembering when he met the guy he ended up marrying.

Jonathan isn't interested in that right now, though. He gestures off into the distance. "How could you let someone do all that, though?" What he described sounded awful, but he said it _eventually_ blew up, and Katie said she thought they were arguing for a while. "Why didn't you just leave?"

The light chills, turns grey. " _Let_?" older-him snarls. He whirls to stomp his way along the sudden sidewalk. Concrete pavement, concrete buildings, concrete light. "You weren't _there_ , brat. You don't know how it works. I do, because it's _literally my fucking job to know_. And because I'm a walking cliche, just like _every other cop_ who falls into that same trap, I thought _my_ situation was _different_." He's spitting the words out, venomous.

Then he stops and whirls, jabbing a finger at Jonathan. Jonathan pulls up short, dodging the contact.

"You have no idea," older-him says. "You've never known what it's like to have someone love you like that, like Andy did, and then _lose_ it. And then to be _really_ alone after, and not know how to make it _stop_. We're not suicidal —" Jonathan flinches a little "— but we probably do have depressive tendencies, and those make us distracted and reckless, which is a _problem_ when you're a cop. And if you go long enough … if you're thirsty enough, you'll drink anything. Even poison."

Darkness looms, pressing down. Older-him starts pulling flares from his jacket, lighting them, and hucking them up into the dark. "Fuck off, fuck _off_ , I really can't handle that right now." He looks back down at Jonathan. "People like that are very, very good at finding broken people. A closeted cop with _zero_ self-esteem and a terror of being abandoned? I was _bait_. I was _shark chum_."

The darkness, ignored, hesitates and then sulks away. Older-him doesn't seem to notice it. The dim grey light isn't much better anyway.

The concrete buildings around them shift and melt, reforming into a circle of arches all around them, like one of those little round … Roman? Greek? … temples. Jonathan is standing at the very center, on a slightly raised stone dais, only a few inches higher than the rest of the floor. The arches are about fifteen feet away in any direction.

Older-him steps closer. "They know exactly how to hook you on attention and affection. They know how to dazzle and blind you at the start." A bright, bright spotlight spears down from above, the contrast with the surrounding gloom almost painful and yet _welcome_ , just for being a reprieve.

It makes it hard to see anything else, though, so Jonathan twitches a little when older-him is suddenly right next to him.

"You know what they do then?" he demands. He leans in close to whisper, " _I'm not going to tell you_."

Jonathan pulls away, partly just to get some space from him, partly in confusion.

"Because knowing didn't matter," older-him sneers. "There are whole _books_ about it. And, I mean, _you_ reading a _book_ …" He scoffs, regarding Jonathan with utter contempt. "Right. But I still picked up enough to know how it all worked, and it still didn't make the slightest fucking difference. _You_ couldn't be bothered to develop any judgment of your own, which left me _hilariously_ susceptible to something called 'gaslighting', and — why the hell am I getting into this, you're a brick fucking wall."

He runs a hand through his hair.

"Just," he mutters. "Why didn't I just. Why don't _you_ just, huh?"

He waves the same hand upward. The bright spotlight spreads out into a ring of lights and then dims enough for Jonathan to see that he's now facing a vast audience. A lectern pops up in front of him.

Jonathan's mouth is suddenly desert-dry.


	3. It's Just That Easy

"You want anyone to notice you," older-him says. "Here's your chance. Go on. Do something interesting. Say something anyone would want to hear."

Jonathan tries to back away, but he promptly bumps into … another lectern? No, the same one somehow, he's gotten turned around … but no matter which way he looks, all he sees is more audience. He's trapped at the center.

"I don't —" Jonathan stammers. "I don't know how —"

A snicker skitters across the crowd.

"Bullshit," older-him says, to a few scattered whoops of approval. "You see and hear other people manage it fine every single day, so why don't you just do it yourself, huh?"

"This isn't the same thing at all," Jonathan says. "You're twisting stuff around. This isn't something I can just _do_."

The crowd is muttering, restless and unimpressed.

" _This_ is actually simple," older-him says. "You're sharing a room with Chris. You've been getting a master class in entertaining people for your entire life."

That doesn't make any sense. He can't just try to act like Chris. Everyone would see that it's just a pale, pathetic imitation.

But older-him steps forward, shifting his posture as he does, and suddenly he almost _is_ Chris. "Get a load of this guy, huh?" he says into the microphone, gesturing to Jonathan with one thumb, every intonation and mannerism perfect.

The crowd goes _wild_ , whistling and cheering for several long seconds. Older-him just accepts it with Chris's satisfied grin before waving a casual hand to send the audience swirling away into nothingness.

Then he turns to Jonathan, dropping the imitation completely. "As someone who's dealt with both, I can guarantee you this was easier. But fine, let's be literal. You think it's so simple. You think you would know how to go up to someone who's giving you a place to live and buying things for you and saying they love you, and you would know exactly how to tell them they're actually making you miserable and you want to leave?"

That … sounds a little more complicated, put that way, but … still. "Yes."

"Fine, then show me." He nods to indicate that someone is standing behind Jonathan.

It's not fair to make him say this stuff to a stranger, a strange _adult_ , but fine. Jonathan takes a breath, turns, and — " _Mom_?"

Mom gives him a quick, distracted smile. "What is it, Jonny?" she asks, slightly impatient.

Older-him is watching from the side. He kicks back in a recliner and plops a tub of popcorn in his lap. "Well, _Jonny_? Show me how it's done."

"But — but this —" This isn't the same thing either, older-him _knows_ that —

Except … he was awfully careful about his phrasing, wasn't he? He set this up.

But that doesn't mean Jonathan has to play along. "You know this is different," he insists.

Older-him throws a handful of popcorn at him. "Wimp. No, it's not identical. It's not like you ever had the guts to try to be with anyone. But this is close enough. You're old enough to move out and get a job if you're not happy about how very little you matter in your own home — and don't bother to lie to me that you are happy, because I was there. I remember."

Jonathan did open his mouth to object, automatically, but … he can't. Not honestly. He still wants to go home, he loves his family, he knows they all love him back, but … no. He … he can't say he's happy.

Still. "Quitting school? Moving _out_? How would living _alone_ help anything?"

"Wow, you are _such_ a hypocrite!" older-him marvels, half-crossing his arms so he can prop his chin in one hand.

"Family is _different_ ," Jonathan insists. Because, yeah, older-him did have to be alone when he got away from the monster guy, but family is forever.

Except ... the monster guy told them all what he is, and older-Jamie hates older-him for that now, and … no one really said anything about everyone else.

They love him back. They do. They _do_.

Mom's smile slips down into a familiar frown. "You said you had something to tell me, Jonny. What is it?"

Older-him gestures widely, signaling for Jonathan to answer her. "Skip the wanting-to-leave part, then, loser. _Just_ tell her the rest."

What is Jonathan supposed to say? He can't actually tell her that stuff. It's not her fault he's so messed up and ungrateful. The least he can do is not hurt her by telling her about it.

Older-him leans forward. "Here it comes," he says, with an eagerness that seems a little fake.

Mom sighs. "I have things I need to do," she tells him, definitely impatient now.

"Wait for it …" older-him says, fingers tightening on the arms of the chair.

" _Important_ things," Mom stresses, and Jonathan can't help flinching.

"Ohhhh!" older-him crows, like a rowdy fan at a boxing match, but … he flinched, too, just a little. "There it is! Come on, are you really going to _let_ her treat you like that?"

Of course Jonathan is, though, because he can't be disrespectful to her, and she's right that she has important things to do, and … and she's right that this _isn't_ important … that _he_ isn't important ...

 _I was always, always wrong_ , older-him said about being with the monster guy. And even though the words are different, the way they feel rhymes.

Older-him sighs heavily. "Apparently you are," he concludes.

He stands and sends both Mom and the recliner swirling away as well, loose popcorn trailing like a comet's tail. Then he turns back to regard Jonathan with a cold anger.

An adult's anger would normally have Jonathan shrinking down, scrambling to apologize and make amends for whatever he'd done wrong, but somehow it doesn't work the same when he knows the adult is actually himself. And … the anger is real, but at the same time, it looks like a mask. Like maybe older-him feels just as small and defeated as Jonathan does, underneath it.

"You say it's so easy to walk away, to speak up, but _you_ can't actually do it, even just here," older-him points out, speaking with an icy precision. "Even when I make it easier for you by making it just one person instead of everyone. But somehow _I_ was magically supposed to know how. And not even just against the simple shit, like the housing and the claims of love. I was supposed to figure out how to walk away when _everything_ around me was telling me how worthless anyone who can't find someone to be with is. When everyone was telling me relationships are work, so it's lazy and greedy and _selfish_ to think being unhappy is reason enough to leave. When wanting to leave just for being _miserable_ meant I was a failure because obviously I _just didn't try hard enough_."

Jonathan looks down, swallows. Selfish, failure — those are pretty much all he _is_ , and he tries so, so hard to be better. Even when he knows it's hopeless.

"I knew the truth, on some level," older-him notes. "Even with all that, even with enough gaslighting I barely knew up from down, there was a part of me that figured out what was really going on. But it doesn't really do you much good to realize you're being eaten alive when you're already halfway down the shark's gullet. Half-assed flailing just drives you deeper, makes the shark bite down harder. Yes, I should have seen it a lot more clearly, a hell of a lot sooner — again, _my job_ — but, for _some_ reason, I've never actually been able to look directly at myself."

He tosses a small box wrapped in newspaper to Jonathan. Jonathan waits for an explanation, puzzled, but older-him just stands there waiting, so Jonathan finally opens it. It's empty.

Jonathan's stomach lurches unpleasantly. He doesn't know why.

Older-him tosses a little plastic Easter egg to him. It's also empty. Then a Russian nesting doll, but there aren't any smaller dolls inside. He walks over to a sarcophagus leaning against a nearby building, demonstrating showroom-style that it contains nothing. He holds out a glass and turns it upside-down, showing that it's empty, too.

Jonathan is starting to shake and he _doesn't know why_.

"All that shit didn't start with me," older-him snarls, his rapidly thawing anger so foreign and yet so _familiar_. Jonathan has never seen it on his own face before, but he _knows_ it.

Older-him pulls a chocolate Easter bunny from a pocket of his jacket, snaps off an ear, and tosses that to Jonathan. It's hollow. He snaps off the other ear for balance, tosses that over his shoulder, and drop-kicks the remainder, which simply shatters and vanishes. Then he shifts into a mocking whine. "'I learned it by watching _you_.'" It sounds like a quote, but Jonathan doesn't recognize it. "Yes, I made my own mistakes, but _you_ overdrew the self-esteem account. _You_ started all that erasing bullshit. You _set me up_. Don't you _dare_ judge me for what _you caused_."

Jonathan's mouth is still so dry. "That's not my fault," he says weakly. He can't stop shaking.

"Really. None of this is familiar."

Little black flecks float up from both of them, forming a cloud. Then one of them arrows away from the cloud, darting at Jonathan like a bird. He tries to duck away, but _boring_ scratches at his cheek. A second one arrows over, and he tries to swat it away, but that just lets _stupid_ score the back of his hand.

But older-him says, "See? You can fight them off. I can't. I can't _touch_ them anymore." A couple go for him, and he raises a hand, but _selfish_ bores right through his hand and the sound of a car hitting a person slashes his face viciously.

"That doesn't make them my fault," Jonathan protests. He squints up at the cloud, trying to make it just go away.

It darkens. Grows. Each fleck swells to the same size and general shape as a small bird.

Older-him snorts. "Yeah, good luck with that. You know wishing never worked on any of that shit."

"Then how do we get rid of it?" Jonathan demands.

"Why the hell are you asking _me_? It's certainly not because you respect my experience." An ugly smirk spreads across his face. "I know you can't stand me. I know exactly how you feel about me. I wasn't there at the same time you were, but you left all the memories just lying around." He wings a manila folder at Jonathan's chest. It hits and falls to the ground, papers and pictures spilling out, a close-up of Katie starting to cry prominent.

There are so many papers, so many pictures, and they're all so ugly. All the vicious, hateful things Jonathan thought about his older self are just right there, out in the open. Detective Smith told Jonathan that older-him would remember all those thoughts and feelings … and Jonathan had been so bitterly, cruelly _glad_ about that. He had taken a twisted _comfort_ in the knowledge that older-him would just have to take all of it, with no way to respond.

But now ...

Jonathan resents that older-him wasn't better, yes. That he didn't find a way to fix things.

But how could he have, when he's just Jonathan plus time?

Jonathan never asked to show up in his life, and he wished older-him had made better choices, and he was jealous of some of what older-him had, and by the end he was scared of what older-him coming back meant for Jonathan. It's been so easy to blame his older self, but … is that fair?

Older-him looks so angry. "The _contempt_ you felt for me," he marvels. "I never knew I _could_ hate anyone that much."

Like he didn't notice how many times Jonathan did try to be fair, or doesn't even remember how Jonathan tried to let him come back earlier. Like … like he only really noticed the times he was blamed and dismissed and resented. Like all he can remember is being rejected.

And boy, does that sound way too familiar.

"Here. You know what?" Older-him sounds threatening now. Dangerous. "Let's use that. I can't fight but you can. You hate me. So … fine, hate me." He sweeps one arm upward, giving himself ominous movie-villain lighting. Then he sweeps that same arm back down, the gesture sending the _entire cloud_ straight for Jonathan.

A year's worth of good-for-him-but-not-truly- _good_ grades smack one after another into Jonathan's head, making him dizzy. "What are you _doing_?" He tries to back away, but a perpetual lack of anything interesting to say dives at his ankles to trip him up.

While he's still fighting to stay on his feet, the cloud swiftly surrounds him, cutting off all escape. A pair of distressingly average drawings start harrying him from opposite sides, dodging his attempts to swat them away. A bunch of things Jonathan doesn't recognize test him but don't seem to be able to touch him — stuff he doesn't know about yet? — so they back off and form a jeering audience. A fleet of disappointed oh-it's-you sighs, more insect than bird, swarm into their wake to sting his hands.

"You wanted to fix things instead of just breaking them. Here's something you and _only_ you can actually fix. Make me be Palpatine, whatever. Use your hate for me and _fight_."

The cloud converges on Jonathan. Every negative thought he's ever had slices at him. Every less-than gouges him. Every failure he's dutifully recorded pummels him. He's trying to block them but they're _everywhere_. _Selfish_ barrels right into his gut, making him double over.

"Stand up and hate me and fight!"

But it's too much. He _can't_. Jonathan curls himself into a ball, the way he taught Jamie to do when outnumbered.

The cloud piles on top of him, cutting and bruising and _hurting_. "Stop," he yells. " _Stop_." Older-him is still shouting but Jonathan can't make it out anymore.

The bird-flecks start tearing pieces of him away, carrying them off to disappear. "Stop, _please_ ," he sobs. They'll rip him apart, reduce him to nothing —

A sudden gust knocks them all aside, just by a few feet. It's enough for older-Katie's arms to wrap around him, keeping him safe. Enough for her couch to slide under them.

He burrows into her arms, still crying. The pain starts to fade, but slowly.

"I'm sorry." The villain lightning fades. The sickly, pallid base illumination of this nothing-place reveals the same pathetic figure of older-him again. He's staring at Jonathan, shoulders slumped, pleading but hopeless.

Jonathan just glares at him.

The dark cloud wheels up and around and down again. Jonathan flinches, but it's not aiming for him this time.

"I'm sorry. I was just trying … I'm sorry."

The cloud swarms older-him.

He doesn't bother to try to block anything. He just drops to his knees as the bird-flecks cut and bruise and tear him, every single one able and eager to hurt him. He just keeps repeating, "I'm sorry," increasingly choked with pain, as they start ripping bits of him away.

Jonathan sniffles. He still hurts.

But … he can't just sit here while someone else gets hurt the same way. Gets hurt _worse_.

One blow sends older-him sprawling. He's getting ripped to pieces. He's not even trying to do anything about that. He's not trying to get back up or even to curl himself away from the attacks.

Jonathan doesn't hate him. He tries not to hate anyone. That's _so_ much harder with himself, but even so, he never really did actually hate his older self. He still doesn't, even now, because he thinks he understands.

He can't do anything directly. He would just get torn apart, too. And some of that stuff might even be dangerous to this Katie.

So he sends in _his_ Katie.

Almost fifteen but not quite, bright eyes, bright present and future. So full of confidence, brimming with love for him.

His Katie takes a moment to judge the situation and then wades in with her racket, sending all the bird-flecks flying.

Belatedly realizing what's happening, older-him looks up at her, afraid. Afraid for her.

But the bird-flecks can't touch her, and she can wallop them. She knocks every one of them away from older-him and off out of sight. Once they've all been cleared away, she stands guard for a minute or two, making sure they aren't trying to circle back.

Jonathan knows somehow that they aren't truly _gone_. But he is also certain that they're subdued for now, held at bay, because of Katie.

Satisfied, she grins in triumph at Jonathan before turning to older-him. She gives him a gentler smile, bops him very lightly on the head with her racket, and runs back home.

Jonathan gives older-Katie one last squeeze of thanks before sending her away, too. And that works, even though Jonathan isn't the one who summoned her. Then he walks over to older-him and offers a hand to help him up.

Older-him stares at it blankly for a few seconds. Then he looks Jonathan over, seeing that he's still battered and torn, seeing that his face is still wet with tears.

Something in his eyes … dies.

"I don't hurt kids," he says softly. Broken. "I _don't hurt kids_."

And then he wisps away into nothing.


	4. Descent

The space is a featureless ash-grey expanse of nothing again. 

"Hey!" Jonathan yells.

Nothing.

"Older-me!" He hasn't actually had to call the guy anything specific out loud before. This was probably rude. But at least it should get a response.

But it doesn't.

Older-him said this was _his_ head. So how can he be gone? Did he lock Jonathan in some corner of it?

This doesn't really feel like that, though.

Older-him used little gusts of wind for tidying. Jonathan tries that, and it takes him a while to do anything more than just mess his hair up, but eventually he's presentable again. Maybe his being such a mess was just upsetting. Then he tries summoning that waterfall back, for somewhere older-him might be more comfortable, but the best he can do is a sort of flat picture. It's not a place _he_ knows. The same happens with the foliage ridge.

But he's able to summon the park back home just fine. And older-him knows this place at least as well as Jonathan does, right? And he followed Jonathan here earlier, or stayed with him when he changed the space around them, or whatever it was that happened. But … he doesn't seem to be here, and he doesn't show up on his own.

Jonathan tries to summon older-him the same way he did the park, or the way he gave himself a rock and a sword, but nothing happens.

He tests with other people. He's able to summon and dismiss his Katie and Dad and Jamie and even his current English teacher. But every time he tries for older-him, nothing.

What is he supposed to do? Everyone he summons himself is just a recreation, nothing real. Older-him was the only other actual person here. Is he just supposed to sit in this unreal place, alone, doing … nothing?

Jonathan tries waiting for a while, but the sun just sits wherever he wants it to, so he can't judge the passage of time very well.

He finally runs his fingers through his hair, frustrated. "I don't understand what's _happening_ ," he complains.

"You're not stupid," Detective Smith says. "I really wish you'd stop pretending you are."

Jonathan turns to face her, relieved. How did he not think of this before? He needs explanations, and she's good with them.

"I'm sorry," he tells her. "I really don't understand."

"If you're right about that, you've got a problem," she tells him. "I'm only as real as you make me, and I only know what you know. But be honest with yourself. You actually do know what happened here."

But he _doesn't_. "Can you explain it, ma'am? Please?"

She smiles. "That's what you put me here for, so sure." She turns to a blackboard and takes up a piece of chalk. First she writes the word "I", with an equal sign below it, and then the phrase "don't hurt kids" below that.

Then on the other side she draws a stick figure, adding a little wavy line as a beard. After that, between "I" and the stick figure, she adds an equal sign with a question mark.

"With me so far?" she checks. "'I' is defined as 'don't hurt kids', and we're testing if it also applies to our little stick figure guy here."

"Okay," Jonathan says slowly.

She adds an equal sign under the stick figure and then "hurt a kid" below it.

"What? When?" Jonathan asks.

She gives him a very long-suffering look.

Jonathan crosses his arms. "I'm not really a kid. And, I mean, he wasn't really —"

"You're a minor, _kid_ ," she says. "That's all it takes. So if the right side is true, and the left side is true … then the left side can't equal the right side." She erases the equal sign between the stick figure and the word "I".

"And since this whole space is some kind of representation of self, or 'I', so we have to keep that, then ..." she trails off, finishing her thought by erasing the stick figure.

Jonathan shudders. "Don't —"

"This is just a representation," she points out. "This is just the recap. That already happened." She sets the chalk down. "Just like you've always wanted."

Jonathan recoils. "No. No, I _don't_ —"

He turns away and breathes for a minute. She's wrong. She has to be wrong.

Even if she's only here to help him process what he already knows. Well, what he _thinks_. He doesn't _know_ yet. Not really.

"So what do I do now?" he asks.

She shrugs. "Take over? You wanted to stay. I guess now you can. If this is his head, then it's in his body, and if he's not here anymore … if you can figure out how to wake up or whatever, I guess you win." She nods over at something on the ground. "Looks like he left you the keys."

Jonathan goes over to pick the object up. It's a simple keyring, a couple of plain keys on it. He puts them in his jacket pocket, but just to keep them safe.

He considers the situation as they start walking along the trail.

"So … I take over his life? His _body_? As — as _me_? How would that even _work_? Like you said, I don't have any of the training I'd need to work with you. I don't know how to be his Katie's brother, or Emma's real uncle. Or married to _anybody_."

"Well, he's probably not all that far from service retirement, at his age, so maybe you could take that somehow. They might do some kind of partial thing, or a medical discharge maybe. Then you could start a whole new career from scratch. Based on your skill set."

That sounds dreadful.

"I'd still check in on you from time to time. I liked you. It'd be weird for you to look like my partner but not really be him, but I'd probably still be kind to you about it. Katie and Emma still like you, so they'd make their own relationships with you, more or less. Mark … yeah, that'd have to end. Some teenager walking around in his dead husband's body?"

"He's not _dead_ ," Jonathan insists.

Detective Smith shrugs. "If you say so. Keep in mind that you're the one who put that phrase in my mouth. Like I said, morbid. But it'll probably look that way for Mark, so yeah, you'll probably end up having to break up. So you can start over from scratch with dating, too. At least _you_ would _never_ fall into the clutches of a tentacle-monster shark. Since you're so much smarter about that stuff and all."

Jonathan stops walking. No. This isn't going to work.

He lets the park go but keeps Detective Smith with him.

"I'm not a detective," he tells her. It's not news to her, especially because she's just a part of him or something, but he might as well use her as a literal sounding board. "But you said I have the potential for it. So. What do I know."

They start walking in a random direction.

"I know there's nothing here, but I can change it to stuff I know. If I try to change it to stuff _he_ knows, it doesn't work right. So this place is only working from me, as far as I can tell."

"Based on very limited experimentation," she says.

"True. But I don't know how long I have, so it'll work for now. I know … there are keys. He said this place works on metaphors and associations, so they're probably more symbolic than anything else. But … they probably mean I'm in charge here now."

"Yes, sir," Detective Smith says dryly.

Jonathan swallows. Ugh. He doesn't _want_ to be in charge. But Detective Smith told him he could if he absolutely had to, so … fine, he'll try.

"I know …"

But he doesn't really know anything else.

"It feels like …"

What, exactly?

"It seems like he's not here. Like he's … gone. Like … like he's dead?" He glances over at the detective, but she's still just politely listening.

There's a big, ugly idea trying to form in his head, but he can't get an edge of it, so he just starts saying whatever words come to his mouth. "Dead, death, Heaven and Hell. But there should only be one soul between us, right? So it's not _real_ death. He can't go anywhere while I'm still here."

That matters. That's important.

"So. If it's not real death. Spiritual death? There's something wrong with his faith, that's for sure. That can be spiritual death. But … it wasn't about faith. It was about something he did. It was about him _knowing_ he did it. And … just knowing … that killed him? Spiritually? Or maybe just symbolically?"

The detective shrugs. "Ending a life can be disturbingly easy and it can be surprisingly hard."

Jonathan gapes at her. She just shrugs a little again, as if she doesn't know where that came from, either.

Still, it's a different angle. Ending a life means something or someone ending it, right? People don't just die for no reason. They get sick or get hurt by an accident or get killed on purpose.

Older-him wasn't sick. Well, maybe in the _head_ , because ... all this, but not really. Older-him did get hurt, but not by accident. He hurt himself, really. And if anyone killed him … this is his head, so it would have been him killing himself.

Jonathan turns sharply on his heel, heading a new direction. "No. We're not suicidal." That matters, that's big, that's _huge_. And he's _certain_ of it.

He's not suicidal and never has been. He tries to push away the memories of that horrid social worker, with all her sly questions. So suspicious of how hard Jonathan worked to keep her out of his head.

He looks around and snorts. Maybe he should have let her in here after all. Good luck to her, finding anything suicidal in all this _nothingness_.

Except … that wasn't why he kept her out. He already knew that wasn't here. He kept her out so she wouldn't see what he was. He didn't actually know what that would look like, but that just meant he didn't know exactly what to hide, since she probably _would_.

Jonathan still doesn't know what that would look like. He certainly doesn't see any sign of it now. Or of any of the other weird stuff he thought was in here, come to think of it, the stuff he doesn't want anyone to see because he doesn't know if maybe it all means he's crazy.

It's so empty here. He shudders.

The detective clears her throat. "Don't get too distracted by it. Eyes on the prize."

Right. Not suicidal. And older-him isn't, either. He mentioned that casually, offhand, as if he didn't even need to think about it.

Suicide means going to Hell. Jonathan is never entirely sure he'll be able to escape that sentence for other reasons, but he tries. He tries _so hard_. He's never been tempted by suicide, mostly just because he really just isn't, but partly because it means Hell.

Something about that … he tries thinking it over again, but he can't find it.

So he tries saying it aloud, "Suicide means Hell." And just that, just the slight shift in perspective — that's enough. "If he died here, it was by his own doing, even if he didn't mean it, and suicide means going to Hell. But he can't actually _go_ anywhere but here while I'm still here. So … so he would have to ..."

Jonathan stops walking and looks down. A hatch forms in the featureless ground, just in front of his shoes.

The detective pats his shoulder once. "Good." And then she's gone.

Jonathan sighs. He doesn't really want to do this alone, but he doesn't know what he'll find yet. He doesn't know what or who he'll need. He'll just have to hope he can maintain enough control over this place to summon people and things when the time comes.

He opens the hatch to find a ladder leading down into darkness. He starts climbing down it. As soon as he's clear, the hatch slams down with a disturbingly final sound, cutting off the little light he had.

Jonathan just glares up at it and then keeps climbing down.

There apparently is a dim light somewhere, somehow, because Jonathan gradually finds he can see again, faintly. The light has a reddish cast.

His feet finally hit a landing. He stands and turns to find himself facing a concrete stairwell heading further down, so he just starts down that as well.

Stairs, landing, quarter-turn, stairs, landing, quarter-turn. He isn't counting, but he thinks he has gone down about fifty of those before he reconsiders.

In his dreams, when he has to hurry down stairs like these, he always ends up jumping down a flight, catching a support pole just at the bottom, and swinging just enough to turn and keep falling down the next flight, catch another pole, swing, keep jump-falling, on and on, perfect momentum. These stairs are just like that, support poles of just the right size at each inner corner, so he might as well try it now.

It actually works here for a long while, until it doesn't. He stumbles a little but manages not to fall, fetching up against a wall. He can see his breath, clouds puffing out and evaporating.

He goes back to taking the stairs normally. He's not sure how much further he even needs to go. He tries expecting the end of the trail after the next flight, or the next one, but the stairs just stretch on and on before him. The reddish light is stronger now, flickering just as he would have expected, and the air is taking on a faintly sulfurous smell, but the temperature is biting cold.

That figures. He _hates_ being cold.

He knows his Dante well enough, though. He wants to hear it all in the original Italian someday, preferably with someone who can remind him who all the once-famous people in it are, but he's been taught the basics in translation. Dante put traitors at the very heart of Hell, encased in ice.

Jonathan is just lucky older-him didn't bother to build all the other levels, if he's going to go for that kind of symbolism. It feels like Jonathan is having to walk all the way down to the center of the Earth, but at least stairs are something he knows how to handle.

He goes down a few more flights, the temperature dropping rapidly as he does. He finally stops to chafe his fingers together, trying to bring some warmth back into them. He needs gloves.

And then he has them, but they form reluctantly.

Well, fine. In that case, he might as well gear up now. He summons his heavy coat and winter boots, his thickest scarf and knit hat. He summons mittens to go on over the gloves, just for extra protection, because his hands are important.

What else would he need?

He _doesn't know_. How is he supposed to do this when he has no idea what _this_ even is?

There's only one other thing he can think of. Annoyed at himself for not thinking of it first, he pulls off the mittens and gloves to free his hands again. He puts his hand into the pocket of his trousers and makes sure his rosary, _his_ rosary, is there. Then he switches to checking the other pocket, tracing out the edges of Detective Smith's contact card.

Security, spiritual and secular. Symbolic, but everything here is.

He fumbles the gloves and mittens back on. When he starts moving again, being so bundled up makes him feel about five years old, sent out to go play in the snow. He shakes the feeling off. This isn't play.

This may all be symbolic, in some fashion or another, but he knows it translates into something important for the real world. Something vital. Possibly something final.

He trudges down another ten flights or so, the temperature dropping still further all the while. The stairs finally, finally end at a door.

A perfectly normal looking door, in a perfectly normal looking hallway, if a little fancy-hotel-ish.

Detective Smith is there, leaning against the doorframe, waiting for him. Jonathan gives her a slightly exasperated look. He's so, so glad to have her there, but why did she get to skip all the stairs?

She just gives him a little smile. "Ready for this?"

Jonathan isn't quite, but he's not going to get any more ready. He nods and approaches the door. There's a lock on it, so does that mean he needs keys? Is that what the plain keys are for?

That doesn't feel quite right, though, so he tries the knob, and the door opens.

Apparently getting _in_ isn't the hard part.


	5. All These I Place

They step inside, and the smell is the very first thing Jonathan notices.

His family goes into the city sometimes during the Christmas season. They do a little shopping and a lot of just-looking. They end up passing by fancy stores sometimes, or people on their way to or from charity balls, and those places and people always smell _expensive_. The smells aren't individually the same, but they all end up smelling like money somehow.

And this place smells like that, like money, only cloying. Choking-thick. Jonathan shifts his scarf up a little, and it helps. He focuses on his worn but sturdy boots, his recently-let-out trousers, his handed-down and diligently mended jacket, his good thick coat from the resale shop. His hat and scarf, handmade Christmas gifts from Grandma Davis years ago.

He's always wished he could have more new things, but he gets more than he really should as it is because Chris is too hard on clothes. The shirt he's wearing now is one of them, no prior owner but himself. He gets new things when he needs them.

Things don't need to be new to be good. They don't have to be expensive to have value.

The place looks like money, too, all sparse space and lack of color. Jonathan instinctively tries to pull something real here — some trees, a branch, even just a _poster_ — but he can't make anything show up.

So he can't summon any— wait. No. He can't summon _that_. But that's all he knows. He needs to be very careful not to make any assumptions about what he _can't_ do here.

Jonathan is not at _all_ accustomed to having to rely on himself to be enough for … well, anything, really. Someone else is always better suited, better prepared, better trained. Better.

But this isn't some competition where his middling skills will always be outshined by someone else's. This is pass/fail. This is all down to him and no one else.

He doesn't want to be in charge. He can if he really has to.

The door closes with a very, very final-sounding click.

Jonathan turns to look automatically, but … that's a problem to be dealt with later. First things first. He turns back.

He's standing in a sort of entryway, wastefully spacious. There's an archway to his right, so he steps through it and into a living room.

Distance is strangely hard to judge in here, but there's a couch a few long paces away. It's an unpleasant shade of white, like old bones, and it looks like that weird poofy kind where when you sit on it, it half swallows you.

Older-him is there. Yes, Jonathan was right, he's still around, he's still …

He's here. But he's slumped lifelessly, his eyes open but flat and empty and _dead_. His arms are pulled back behind him. A dark mass of tentacles is wrapped around him, pinning him down, tearing idly at his clothes to expose shirt and undershirt and skin.

One tentacle is a hand, clamped down on the back of his neck. Another, wider tentacle is wrapped tightly around the bottom of his face, flattened with pressure, covering his mouth entirely.

Detective Smith called older-him multilingual and said he was good at languages and talking. Older-him talked about being convinced to stop talking, to shut up. And that's being forced now, silencing him, stealing away the _one thing_ he might actually be any good at.

Jonathan feels _anger_ at that, and he embraces it, because he needs that spark badly. It is so, so cold here. There has never been any warmth in this place.

But it's not silent in here. Not quite. There's a low, incessant whisper, and — Jonathan was misled by the eyes, but older-him isn't completely lifeless. His head moves slightly, a resigned nod, accepting the condemnation of those whispers.

Caïna, the outermost layer of the innermost layer of Hell, traitors to kin. Encased below the neck in ice but allowed to bow their heads. There's no biting wind here, except the whispers are basically the same thing.

Jonathan pulls his hat down over his ears to block out the words. He hears them often enough all the time from _himself_.

Older-him doesn't seem to be struggling to escape. He's not literally encased in ice — he mixes his metaphors and seems content to allude to stuff rather than recreating it perfectly, which is _absolutely fine_ because it's not like Jonathan has a blowtorch or anything — but it's not clear if he even can move of his own volition. That doesn't mean he's entirely still, though. He's twitching at every touch of the tentacles, and shivers spasm through him occasionally. The shadowy hand on his neck actually isn't constant; it slips away and then back again, and older-him flinches _every time_.

Jonathan scowls and starts forward. He has no idea what to do, but he can at least try to pull older-him away from all that.

His progress across the floor is dreamlike. He takes normal steps, but they don't cover nearly as much ground as they should. He gets closer only very, very gradually.

Older-him blinks. His lifeless eyes struggle to focus as Jonathan takes another step, and another, and another. He finally registers what — who — he's seeing.

His eyes fill with terror.

Jonathan hesitates. Why would older-him be scared of Jonathan? He shakes that off, though, because he has to fix this. He takes another step forward.

"No!"

Jonathan stares down in astonishment at the little girl who is blocking him, her hands planted firmly against his knees. She's so little, maybe three or four, dressed in a flouncy Christmas dress. Her dark curls are familiar, though. "... Emma?"

She glares up at him. "You can't! There's a bad people!"

"I know," Jonathan says. "I have to help —"

" _No_!" Emma stomps her foot, somehow making the floor shake so hard Jonathan falls right down on his butt.

He scrambles back to his feet — and Detective Smith suddenly has her arms looped up under his and her fingers locked across the back of his neck, pinning him in place. "I'm sorry," she says, sounding sincere. She also suddenly sounds a lot more _real_ somehow. "He knows me a hell of a lot better than you do. He knows I _can't_ let you get tangled up in all that."

Jonathan struggles, trying to break free, but she's got far more experience at this. Or at least older-him believes she can hold him still, and his belief makes it true.

Jonathan tries to counter that — he's a little taller, he's younger, he's got more upper-body strength … maybe … But no, those aren't enough to overcome experience and _training_. He has no leverage like this, and her fingers are securely locked together behind

behind

_hand on the back of his neck, possessive_

His _entire body_ spasms with revulsion. Suddenly he's moving, spinning, Detective Smith pivoting to send him staggering towards the door as she lets go.

"Sorry," she says again. "That was just meant to be a quick control hold that didn't rely on pain compliance. Accidental coincidence. You shouldn't have had to feel that."

Jonathan rubs at his neck, fruitlessly trying to wipe away the feeling of fingers that were never actually there. His scarf kept her hands from touching him directly, and it keeps his mittens from making contact now.

Jonathan looks over at the couch, farther away than ever now. The whispering is louder, but older-him is ignoring it, still staring at Jonathan with raw terror.

Jonathan tries to step forward again, but Detective Smith moves to block him, and little Emma crosses her arms and scowls fiercely. Jonathan tries to step to the other side, but older-Katie blocks him, too.

"Let me _through_ ," Jonathan says. Pleads.

"It's just not safe, son," Dad says. It seems like he should be older, but he's just the way Jonathan remembers. "I'm sorry."

"You _promised_ ," his Katie says. No, younger, the one who saved him, her hands still covered in his blood. And Detective Smith says _he's_ morbid? "You promised you'd stay _safe_."

Even more people start to form, but some of them don't stick, somehow, as if they can't exist in this space. Andy and Mark, maybe, and Jonathan thinks he might understand that, but he can't focus on comprehending it right now. An older woman fades in and then back out again near where maybe-Mark almost was. Someone who is probably older-Katie's husband, judging from the height, tries to form but doesn't make it. Steve from school wavers in but can't seem to settle on an age before wavering back out.

A man with a news camera and a woman with a microphone do manage to stick, but they seem unsure why they're present. The woman glances over at older-him and looks devastated. "We only ever made it worse," she says. "I. _I_ made this worse." The man puts a comforting hand on her shoulder, and the two of them are suddenly gone.

Another man shows up solidly on the other side of where they were. Lt. Ciccone. "You can't be here," he tells Jonathan, voice firm and unquestionable as he steps over to close the gap.

"You hafta stay away from the bad people," Emma insists.

"You're all that's left," older-Katie says. "Without you, everything collapses."

"Someone's got to drive," Detective Smith points out. "He left you the keys."

Jonathan barks a tired laugh. "I don't have my _license_ yet," he reminds them all. Sure, it's not the same thing, except it also is.

Older-him is still staring silently, eyes pleading now. _Go_.

He blamed Jonathan before. _You set me up_. So why is he shielding Jonathan from the effects of that? Shouldn't he go free and let Jonathan take his place?

"It's my fault." Jonathan is terrified himself now, but … fair play. "Let me swap places."

"You can trim back a tree and it still grows," Dad says. "Even if you cut it back hard, it can survive. You can't cut out the middle and leave the top. It doesn't work that way."

That's not fair at _all_. Why should older-him have to pay for Jonathan's mistakes?

Jonathan has been so very disappointed by older-him, but older-him is just Jonathan plus time. Older-him is the one who had to keep going. Older-him is the one who had to pay for everything.

And he was okay until Jonathan kept stirring things up. "Why won't you let me _help_ him?"

"Because you're not suicidal," Detective Smith tells him, "and going in there would be."

"Then why won't _you_ help him? You're all his friends, right? The people he trusts? Help him!"

"There's not really much I can do," Detective Smith says. "There are laws about physical abuse, but this wasn't. This was all emotional, and that doesn't leave evidence I can work with. He doesn't even remember if —" But then she just _glitches_ forward, words lost.

Something older-him doesn't want Jonathan to know? Something he can't bear to know himself?

Whatever it is, Detective Smith just resets as if nothing happened. "There's nothing I can act on. All I could do is point him to resources."

"Statute of limitations at this point, too," Lt. Ciccone adds.

They're confined by their realism? Then why did older-him want them to be so realistic? This is _garbage_. Jonathan turns to older-Katie. She can do _anything_.

But she just looks back at him sadly. "He hid it from me. He still hides so much of what really happened from me. I can't even see it." Little-Katie nods and buries her face against her older self's shirt.

"We hafta stay away from the bad people," Emma tells him tremulously, and of _course_ she can't be the one to go in there anyway. "We hafta run-run-run-run and find Mommy or Daddy." She clings to older-Katie's leg.

And that leaves … "Dad. He's your _son_. You _have_ to help him."

"Settle down, Jonny," Dad says. "I can't let _you_ go in there. You're too young for whatever all that is. He's a man. I don't understand why he's just letting someone hurt him, but he needs to stand up for himself." Jonathan flinches to hear his own earlier thoughts spoken so baldly.

"Besides, he's a cop," Detective Smith says, but there's something wrong with her voice.

"Cops aren't victims," the lieutenant agrees, his voice strangely artificial, too.

"No cop would ever end up in that kind of situation," Detective Smith recites woodenly.

"Certainly no _real_ cop." The lieutenant adds a dramatic wave, several beats too late for effect.

"And real cops aren't —" Detective Smith hesitates. "Aren't ..." She rolls her eyes. "Line?"

His mouth producing the words in the same way someone would hold a dead rat, the lieutenant supplies, "'Real cops aren't faggots anyway.'" He and Detective Smith share a look of exasperation, as if they resent being used to say these things.

Because older-him made them so, so realistic. But they couldn't help saying that stuff, either, even though none of it was true for the two of _them_ specifically, because they're also symbolic.

This is part of the trap. All of this is part of the trap, older-him's trusted people being blocked from helping him. Being warped into yet another way to keep any other help from reaching him.

And it's working, because Jonathan can't get past them. Even the terror in older-him's eyes is fading, dying, as he sinks back down into resignation. Into simple certainty he can't escape.


	6. Faith

No.

If Jonathan has to be in charge now, he says _no_.

He closes his eyes, sinks further down into himself, and takes stock. What does he have?

He has himself. He wants to discount that out of hand, but he can't, because someone has to do something and he's the only one who can.

He has Detective Smith's contact card. It makes him feel more secure, but it's not enough here, with an avatar of her being used to block him.

He has his rosary. He has his _faith_. He has certainty in God and the church, in Jesus and Mary and the saints. In love and charity, in good works. In good over evil. In protecting the weak.

His faith is his sword, his armor, and his shield.

He's never really been one for the sword. He can use a weapon if he really has to, but weapons can hurt. They're _meant_ to hurt, mostly. They have to be used carefully. And swords now make him think of that Gryffindor thing older-him mentioned earlier, and he knows he's not that, so the sword isn't really his anyway.

Armor … that's useful, of course. He does need that, because if he falls, he can't help anyone else. Armor is a sort of uniform, too, to get him in the right frame of mind, and that matters.

But shields … he knows shields. Because a shield can be used to protect himself, but more importantly, it can be used to protect someone else. His faith is his shield and _he_ is a shield for others. He keeps Jamie safe, and he'll grow up to be a cop to keep other people safe.

He'll grow up to become his older self. And older-him will summon an umbrella to protect his younger self from falling glass, heedless of his own safety, and he'll put up barricades to try to keep his younger self away from danger, and he'll put his own trusted people between them, all to keep his younger self _safe_.

… Jonathan is making himself a little dizzy here. _Eyes on the prize_.

He has his faith. The rosary in his pocket is a symbol of that.

He knows the power of symbols. Sacramentals are comforting not because they _are_ Truth, but because they _represent_ Truth. They evoke and invoke. They give form and focus. They provide structure.

His rosary is his Symbol for this. And for older-him …

Eyes still closed, Jonathan sticks his right hand between his knees to pull off the mitten and glove again, then frees his left hand from their coverings as well. The cold bites viciously at his fingers, but he ignores it as best he can. He needs his hands for this.

His school uniform jacket doesn't normally have inner pockets, but the school uniform he's wearing now is a construct. He doesn't know how much he can affect this _space_ , but he's certain he can affect _himself_. He believes his jacket has an inner pocket now, he believes it has the _specific_ pocket he needs, and so it does.

When he first landed in his older self's life, he reached into the inside jacket pocket of the suit he found himself wearing and pulled out a badge, so the badge is here now. He pulls that out again, keeping his eyes closed, and holds it aside carefully.

This same pocket is where he tucked the wedding ring to keep it safe. And the ring is here now. He holds it very, very carefully as he puts the badge back into the pocket.

Now. He has to be certain he doesn't drop this ring.

Older-him was okay. He got away from the monster, and he spent time alone, and he met someone good. Someone good enough to convince him to try again, when he had decided he never would. Someone good enough to make a lifetime commitment.

After something like all _this_ , it would take a _lot_ for anyone to trust like that again. And the sheer scope of all that gives this ring power.

It doesn't feel right to put this ring on his own third finger. He's not the one who's married. He slides it onto his left index finger instead. It's a little loose, but if he keeps his hand balled up, it can't fall off.

He opens his eyes.

The people are still between, blocking him, on guard because they know he means to try something. He expected that, really. There's no way he can beat all of them.

But he has to get past them anyway. He knows space and distance are weird here, and he knows he has to try, and he knows he is loyal and fair and hardworking and _stubborn_.

And he has his faith.

His clothing has started to glow slightly, because his faith is his armor. Not a holy gold, but a simple white, faint but steady. White for innocence, maybe, and he's old enough to be a little miffed by the thought, even now. But he's also old enough to know that he _is_ innocent of so, so much. To know that there's so very much he doesn't know or understand. Right now, that probably even helps him. It will do.

He starts to recite Our Father, but he starts in English, and it doesn't feel quite right. He goes ahead and says it all the way through, to show respect, to settle himself, but he knows what he needs for this.

He accepts the church teaching on the language of services and prayer. He does, of course. And he was born years too late anyway.

But the prayer-language of his heart is Latin.

" _Pater noster, qui es in c_ _æ_ _lis, sanctificetur nomen tuum_." And he starts running. " _Adveniat regnum tuum_." He continues, not on automatic, but easily. These prayers are so well known, so well loved, that he can recite them and _believe_ every individual word of them even as he has to do something else at the same time.

Emma … that stomp of hers is trouble. Keeping his left index finger bent to keep the ring on, Jonathan scoops her up and spins, around and around and around, careful to finish this prayer completely before speaking anything else.

"— _sed libera nos a malo. Amen_." This place runs on weird associations. He uses his spinning momentum to toss Emma, not to older-Katie, but to Detective Smith. "Keep her safe!"

Detective Smith didn't expect that move at _all_ , but she lunges to catch Emma and then holds her close. Emma _shrieks_ but can't get free.

Lt. Ciccone starts forward, so Jonathan points to Detective Smith. She said that the lieutenant "looks after us". Older-him made them realistic? Jonathan is going to _use_ that. "Protect your officers!"

The lieutenant stops, nods once, and puts his hand on Detective Smith's shoulder.

Dad is easy. Jonathan feints left and then dodges around to the right. Dad has always been so, so easy to mislead. Jonathan keeps running.

He has longer legs than little-Katie, so she can't keep up with him.

He has more endurance than older-Katie, so she can't keep up either.

And then all that's left is crossing the space to the couch. Jonathan runs and runs, digging out his rosary and looping it securely over his right wrist. " _Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum_."

Older-him is starting to stir again. He registers Jonathan's approach with confusion and then alarm. His eyes glance over to where his people are.

But Jonathan is certain he has left them far behind, and older-him doesn't seem to be able to change that.

He starts to squint a little, trying to change _something_ here, so Jonathan raises his voice. He's not shouting, exactly, but he's … proclaiming emphatically. "— _ora pro nobis peccatoribus_ —"

And older-him hesitates. Because something may be wrong with his faith, but he's not about to interrupt this prayer.

… which is ending. "— _nunc, et in hora_ —" But this is the closest Jonathan has ever had to anything interesting to say, and he's not about to let anyone get a word in edgewise. Not now. "— _mortis nostr_ _ӕ_ _amen credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem_ —" It's not disrespect to run prayers together, it's _not_ , it's — it's _exigency_.

And a flicker of _amusement_ brings life back into older-him's eyes. Amusement and respect and resigned acceptance, because he still can't bring himself to interrupt, not with enough conviction to matter.

And he still loves the sound of these prayers in Latin, even in Jonathan's unexceptional voice. His eyes slip closed, but only so he can listen better.

This is a longer prayer, so older-him has plenty of time for that. Even so, Jonathan is pretty sure he's making actual progress now, getting properly closer. And the whole time, older-him just listens and waits.

… Until Jonathan reaches " _Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam._ " At that, he flinches, his eyes opening again. There's anger in them now, of all things, something specific to the role of the church, but it's something old and something not-of-here.

That question can wait for later, or maybe never. And another flicker of amusement shows up, wry this time, when Jonathan gets to, " _Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum_ —"

This one's ending, too, so Jonathan prepares to run straight into another prayer after, but as soon as he finishes saying, " _et vitam venturi sæculi amen_ —" he crashes into the couch.

Ugh, it is the squashy eat-you-alive kind.

Jonathan flails a little, trying to right himself, and tumbles against both his older self and the mass of tentacles. His stomach lurches with nausea, but his many layers of clothes and the armor of his faith combine to protect him from being truly hurt or entangled. Or at least his trust in them is enough. It doesn't really matter which. All that matters is that he act now, while he's still safe.

He has to fumble his left arm free and around, and he can't really even feel his hands anymore, but he still has his left hand balled up. He presses the ring against the nearest one of the tentacles, pouring all of his own belief into the power of this symbol.

There's a hissing sound at the contact, like a skillet, or like a hot iron touching wet cloth. The ring starts to glow gently, a warm golden light.

The tentacle withdraws slightly from that light, so Jonathan pushes forward, forcing the contact again and again. The light grows brighter and brighter each time, and the tentacles withdraw a little faster each time. Again. Again. Again. Again.

And then the mass of tentacles abruptly snaps into itself, like a tape measure being suddenly retracted. It's gone.

Older-him doesn't really react, just staring at Jonathan with a sort of dulled amazement. Just like earlier, when he needed Andy to help him shake himself back into place, but Andy can't be here. So Jonathan fights his own way free of the couch, hooks his hands under one of older-him's arms, and _pulls_.

They land in a sprawl on the floor, but at least they're free of the couch. Older-him blinks a couple of times and sees the couch.

And the couch _bursts into flames_.

It burns itself into nonexistence in only about three seconds, though. Which is a pity, really, because they could have used the heat.

After that, older-him just drops back to lie limp on the floor, his arms still pulled behind him, his clothes in tatters. He's got to be freezing, but first things first.

He's … handcuffed? They look like normal police handcuffs. Jonathan is tempted to ignore them, but just about everything here is symbolic and he doesn't know what this means.

A sharp whistle brings his head snapping up. Lt. Ciccone is throwing something to him. The warping of space is apparently gone now, so the object arrives far more quickly than Jonathan half-expects. He puts up his right hand and just barely catches a small set of keys. They tangle with his rosary a bit, so he has to take a few seconds to separate everything again, his fingers thick and nearly useless with cold.

He then fumbles his way through unlocking and removing the cuffs. It's weird that he kept avoiding touching older-him before, because the contact doesn't do anything special. Older-him is just limp and pliant, unresponsive.

Once the handcuffs are dealt with, Jonathan carefully pulls the ring from his own finger and slips it onto his older self's third finger.

The space fills with warm golden light, so bright that nothing else can be seen.


	7. Home

A door closes and locks, the heavy chunk of the deadbolt sounding only like safety and security. With that sound, the light fades to a more normal level. Jonathan can see again.

He's standing in a small living room. There are windows behind him, golden-hour sunlight streaming in. There's a television between a couple of the windows, and low bookshelves under them, and more bookshelves to Jonathan's left. The wall on that side then has the door to another room, and that wall continues on to include the door to a second other room before ending next to what must be the front door of this place.

A dark-haired man with glasses is at that door, just finishing locking it. On the other side of that man from the wall is a table, and he turns to leave his keys on the table before resettling his grip on a pair of crutches. To Jonathan's right of the table is a passthrough and then a small kitchen, one he's seen before in a picture. A gap between the kitchen and the living-room wall to Jonathan's right leads off to parts unknown — a hall to a bathroom, maybe — and then there's a little open space, and then a recliner hard against that wall. Yet another bookshelf fills the corner between the recliner and the windows.

Directly in front of Jonathan is a coffee table. There's room to move around it, but not much. On the other side of that is a couch in one of those neutral colors that takes a few dozen words to try to describe. There's no wall behind the couch, just a few feet of space to pass between it and the table or kitchen.

Older-him is curled up into a tight little ball on the couch, arms covering his face and head. He's wearing very casual clothing now, sweatpants and a thick, soft-looking sweater.

Jonathan is confused by the sudden change of location and very, very sure he's intruding in someone else's place, so he holds back to try to understand what's going on, even though he's relieved and worried and triumphant and scared and about fifty other things all at once. His own cold-weather gear is gone, and he can't tell whether he's the one who let it go, but he's not cold at all.

The dark-haired man starts making his way from the door, past the table, and along behind the couch. "I'll be with you in a minute or two," he tells Jonathan. 

Jonathan has seen him in pictures, too. Dr. Mark Sanders, though he doesn't actually use the title socially because he's not a medical doctor. The man Jonathan's older self is married to.

Dr. Sanders moves all the way to the side of the couch that's on Jonathan's right and then comes around to the front. He gathers his crutches together, sit-falls onto the couch, and carefully places the crutches in easy reach. He's wearing a satchel with the strap across his chest, and he works that off and sets the satchel down in front of the couch, too.

The moment he settles back, older-him _swarms_ forward to cling to him, burying his face against Dr. Sanders's right shoulder.

Dr. Sanders just puts his arms around older-him gently and carefully starts petting his hair. "Okay," he says softly. "Okay."

There is _absolutely no reason_ for Jonathan to feel jealous, but he does. Just a little. He looks away from the two of them.

Most of the book titles he can make out are incomprehensible, some because they're complex, others because they appear to be in what is probably Hebrew. There are a few items of obvious religious significance around — a menorah, a silver cup, a framed scroll — but nothing Catholic. An impressively ugly vase sits atop one low bookshelf; a beautiful print of autumn foliage hangs above the recliner. None of it holds Jonathan's attention for very long, and he soon finds himself studying the crutches.

After the promised minute or two, Dr. Sanders speaks. "You're staring," he tells Jonathan, a slight edge in his voice.

Jonathan blushes. He honestly does have manners. Somewhere. "I'm sorry, sir. I was just wondering, can't he … couldn't …" But it'll sound crazy, if he's wrong about where they are.

"Couldn't he let me walk without crutches, if he's constructing me?" Dr. Sanders finishes.

So they are still probably inside older-him's head. "Yes, sir."

"He could, yes. There is a part of him that wants to, quite badly. He also knows, though, that they've shaped who I am now. I've needed them for … oh, about a third of my life at this point." He smiles down at older-him. "Estimation is fine. Let it be." He looks back up at Jonathan. "I wouldn't be realistic without them now, and he needs me to be as real as he can possibly make me. He needs that very, very much right now."

"Is … is he okay?"

Dr. Sanders looks so sad. "No."

… Oh.

Well, of course. Of course Jonathan wasn't good enough.

"Please don't blame yourself," Dr. Sanders says. "He does quite enough of that as it is. If he does make it through this, it will be because of you. You did save him. He is …" Dr. Sanders draws a shaky breath before continuing, " _so_ grateful to you. Unfortunately, what you did for him doesn't change the fact that he hurt you, which still threatens to shatter the fundamental core of his identity. That then tangled with an old trauma in damaging ways. He is very badly hurt, and he may not be able to recover. It doesn't help that he was already injured before this started."

Jonathan feels sick. "Injured?" He … he seemed fine, and Jonathan was so _awful_ to him, over and over.

But Detective Smith said he lies about how hurt he is. And Chris taught Jonathan to hide injuries and weaknesses when … when he has to fight, or thinks he might have to. Older-him wouldn't need to hide any of that from her or from Katie, but maybe he forgot how not to, once everyone knew what he was. Because bullies target weaknesses. 

And … and Jonathan has been so ...

Older-him even said it early on, really. _When having you take over my life for a few days drives me into a nervous breakdown._ He didn't say it casually, exactly, but he said it like he expected everyone to know about it already. If they're all inside his head, then that would be just like being physically injured out in the real world, right? And he even thought that he was hurt worse than he already knew, that he'd broken completely and gone fully crazy.

And Jonathan ignored that and kept pushing at him anyway. Just like a bully, unfair and _cruel_.

Dr. Sanders frowns and looks down at older-him. "You know I would never say that," he says firmly, even though Jonathan didn't hear older-him say anything. A few seconds later, he adds a gentle-but-final, " _No_."

Jonathan tightens his hand around his rosary, hidden in his pocket. What if this is just another trap? What if it looks all pretty and safe just so Jonathan will let down his guard? "Why won't you let him talk?"

The monster guy silenced older-him. He shouldn't be silent here.

"I'd be more than happy if he would speak for himself," Dr. Sanders says. "He can't right now. He …"

Dr. Sanders pauses to consider for a few seconds.

"You do something you call _drifting_ , yes?" he says finally. He sounds just like one of the teachers at school launching into a lengthy explanation, though more patient than they usually are. "You remain aware on one level of what's said around you, and you can reconstruct it later, but you give yourself permission to stop thinking for a while. You give yourself permission not to worry about what other people might expect from you. You've never been quite sure if it's exactly the same as what other people call zoning out, so you have your own name for it. You only let yourself do it around someone you trust, preferably someone who is talking the whole time, because you worry you wouldn't be able to find your way back out otherwise."

There's no point denying it. "Yes, sir."

"He _needs_ that, just as you do. It's a way to give himself a break, and with his job, he really does need to shut his brain down sometimes just to be able to keep going. He knows it's safer than some of the things other law enforcement professionals come up with, but he still worries that … no, love, I'm still not going to say that. He worries it's not healthy."

"I can still talk if I have to, though," Jonathan says.

"Yes, because when you drift, you're partially disconnecting from the real world around you and retreating into your head, but you're holding a tether to that outside world. You follow that tether back if someone … 'tugs' on it to get your attention. Ordinarily, he does the same. Mentally, he sometimes comes here for that now, if he has certain specific needs. This is as faithful a reconstruction of our apartment as he can create. We do have guests from time to time in the real version of this place, but it's fundamentally _ours_ , so only the two of us are allowed in this version of it."

"Then … how …"

"We don't know how you're here. You shouldn't be able to be. This is _his_ place. He's grateful to you, and he does need to try to work things out with you, but he needs a breather. For you to be here … that may represent some kind of crack or breach." Dr. Sanders looks very worried. "Please be careful. He _needs_ this place to be safe."

Jonathan closes his eyes. He's not about to try to change this place, especially after hearing something like that, but he can notice how it feels.

It's small and comfortable, lived-in but perfectly organized and tidy. Everything is exactly where it belongs. It's bright, and it's warm, and the only smell is a faint combination of coffee and home cooking. It feels like a home and it feels loved.

It is very much not Jonathan's. This is absolutely older-him's place. Older-him might have inherited the general space from Jonathan, but he's been building it out since, and this corner of it is entirely his own.

But Jonathan can feel more. "You locked the door," he says slowly. "It's a good lock. It's security. It's safety." He opens his eyes again. "It will hold."

He believes that utterly. It is true.

He's not going to push his belief outward, because he doesn't trust that even that might not be too dangerous, but he holds it. It's here as an anchor if needed.

Dr. Sanders considers him carefully and then gives him a wary nod. "Regardless, this time he's not simply withdrawing from the outside world. As far as he can tell, he's already inside his own head, so he can't get the separation he needs. That seems to be pushing him towards a nonverbal state, but he still needs to be able to communicate with you, which means he _can't_ be nonverbal. He needs me here for comfort, so he's borrowed me to speak for him as well, possibly as a way to recreate some form of distance."

Dr. Sanders sighs. "It's symbolically shaky, because ordinarily, I'm more oriented towards reading and writing than speaking, and in the real world, I certainly can't read his mind. Unfortunately, he has very few options at the moment, so … needs must, as no one but me actually says anymore." He smiles very faintly.

"What won't you say?" Jonathan demands. "There's something he wants you to say but you keep refusing."

Dr. Sanders looks pained. "There's actually a great deal I won't say if I'm realistic to my external counterpart, which is another reason this is complicated. Pejoratives are one of several categories I try to avoid. Mental illness is not a moral failing, nor are mental or emotional needs. Unfortunately, you come from a culture of conformity. You seem to have learned from it that any mental or emotional … _discrepancy_ from a very narrowly defined standard is a flaw or failure to be ashamed of."

That sure is a lot of words to talk around something simple. "You mean we're worried we're crazy."

"Yes, that _would_ be the term I was pointedly _not_ using," Dr. Sanders says with irritation. "Due to a variety of social and personal factors, you've unfortunately learned to consider many of your basic needs, functional coping mechanisms, and simple, beautiful personality _quirks_ as signs of a flaw to be ashamed and afraid of. _They're not_."

Jonathan draws in on himself. He shouldn't have said anything.

But then Dr. Sanders winces. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you, and I apologize. This is a topic I have _very_ strong opinions about, but it's also one he's only recently been able to start to admit his fears about. He's actually been managing surprisingly well for a very long time with a combination of repression, willful self-blindness, and determination. Unfortunately, your brief replacement of him upended all of that, and he's been wrestling with something he was forced to realize as a consequence."

"About … about his faith?" Jonathan ventures.

Dr. Sanders looks surprised. "No. Why would you ask that?"

"Because … how can he be _me_?" Jonathan hadn't wanted to know the answer to this, but it doesn't make any _sense_. "He doesn't carry a rosary and there are no sacramentals in here at all, and this place isn't actually real but he recreates your faith symbols but not mine, and he got married in your faith and I'm — I'm guessing the church didn't _really_ adjust its message about what we are and — and the broken glass, and —"

"Stop." Dr. Sanders takes off his glasses and pinches at the bridge of his nose for several seconds. "You always seem so surprised you could ever be a detective, and yet you somehow never notice that, once you decide you want to understand something, you _will not_ let it _go_ until you do. This is something you _can't_ know, but you won't stop trying. Give us a few minutes."

He puts his glasses back on and closes his eyes in concentration. Older-him curls in a little tighter.

Jonathan remembers, with shame, how he kept asking and asking about the monster guy, even though he knew older-him didn't want to talk about it. He wouldn't have pushed anyone else like that, when it was so obvious he was causing pain. Only … only himself.

"All right," Dr. Sanders says finally, opening his eyes again. "First, I need to explain the problem. There are certain concepts that are fundamental to your core identity. For your older self here, _my_ Jonathan, that has included the conviction that he does not hurt kids. If he can't find a way to reconcile that with the knowledge that he hurt you — not accidentally, not incidentally, not inadvertently, not unknowingly, but entirely intentionally — he will shatter. Not in the same way you pulled him back from, I think, but in a way he may not be able to construct a new self from."

This place doesn't have the background picture commentary the other places have had, but Jonathan still remembers the way Detective Smith erased the little stick figure. He swallows.

"Your faith is fundamental to your core identity. If I explain to you why it isn't for him, and if I explain the choice he had to make, those will shatter your faith, and that will shatter you. Your inflexibility has helped you a great deal here, but it will harm you for this. You _will not_ survive understanding. Remember that if you don't survive, _nothing here_ does. For him to tell you is quite literally suicide, in that respect."

So they're not going to tell him. Of course.

"However, you are stubborn, for good and for ill. You're more intelligent than you've trained yourself to believe. You also have a knack for unexpected correlations. It's entirely possible that you'll find the answer yourself. Leaving you to risk that is similarly dangerous."

"Then … what?"

"Symbolically shaky is one thing," Dr. Sanders says, looking sad. "Symbolically _void_ would unmake this place completely. I'm a teacher. What comes next is something I _cannot_ be the one to do." He bends his head down to kiss older-him on the top of his head. "It's time, love."

After a couple of seconds, older-him nods against Dr. Sanders's shoulder and then makes himself sit up, though he promptly pulls his right knee up and wraps that arm around it. He looks _unwell_ , wan and drained and bruised.

Dr. Sanders reaches over with his left hand to take older-him's left hand and tangle their fingers together. With his right hand, he strokes older-him's hair, staying well clear of the back of the neck.

Older-him takes a few slow, deep breaths before speaking.

"I went through things you haven't had to yet, faith-wise," he says. His voice is rough, and he's speaking more slowly than usual. "Well, most of it. You're already dealing with a little, but for now, you're handling it your way. Things changed over time, in ways I am _so_ glad you don't have to know, but in a way they prepared me. And I had other things, better ones. And there were still other things that I had to work out compromises on, and you're not ready for those, either. They all, good and bad, let me find myself in ways that didn't rely on faith alone."

He takes another breath, this one shaky.

"I'm going to explain exactly when and why I finally broke with the Catholic Church. When you understand it, you will understand the choice I had to make and why I _had_ to choose what I did. But that's why it will break your faith, too, and I can't let that happen. So as soon as you understand, I'm going to take it away again. You'll know _that_ I had a reason you can accept. You just won't be able to find it again, and you shouldn't want to try."

"... How?" Jonathan asks. "Hypnotism? More magic?"

Older-him manages the ghost of a smile at that. "Nothing that fancy. We're in my head. Mine, yours, both, whatever. But this space is _mine_ , and that means I can do some things I might not otherwise be able to do."

He frowns a little. "I actually haven't known what's in your head this entire time, which is weird. I remembered what you did when you replaced me, and you _did_ have this whole place first. You'd think we'd be literally sharing a brain. For some reason, both of us being _together_ is keeping me out of yours, and … you out of mine, I think?" He pales further. "I _desperately hope_?"

Jonathan nods. "That's why I kept asking you questions," he points out. He's not going to give the guy a hard time about it, because he's been through a _lot_ , but … come on.

Then again, Jonathan does tend to jump to questionable conclusions when he panics. He just doesn't usually have to see how frustrating that is from the outside.

Older-him sighs with relief. "Right. Right. That makes sense. Okay. I don't know if that means we'll always be separate now and you're _not_ actually a linchpin, or if you'll reintegrate into my memories once this is all over, or … anything, really. I'm hoping this isn't some kind of delusional fugue state that we're permanently stuck in or something."

Early on, he'd been so bleak, gesturing to the space around them as evidence he must be crazy. But that wasn't fact. That was fear. He was just as lost and confused as Jonathan, but he had a specific reason to jump to the worst possible interpretation.

The space around them … they've both been able to control it simply by thinking, and it hasn't been all _that_ much more strange than Jonathan would have thought the inside of his head would look like, or what he could believe it would look like after another thirty years or so.

"Probably not," Jonathan says. If it is, they can deal with that later. He makes a face. "If this is so important, you should test it first." He _does not_ want anyone poking around in his head and stealing anything, but … he's also not remotely suicidal. He doesn't want to be told something that will break him and then find it can't be taken away after all. "Maybe … Detective Smith mentioned something called 9/11?"

Both men look sickened. "How about _not_ that?" older-him counters. "How about very much not that? Because … you're right. You don't have any reason to trust me in the first place, or to think I can do … well, anything, I guess. You shouldn't have to deal with me putting terrible things in your head just to see _if_ I can get them back out again."

"How will you find whatever it is to take it back out anyway? If you can't see in my head."

Older-him sags. He draws himself in tighter, smaller. "This is my place. I should be able to frame what I tell you. Attach a sort of tether, maybe." Wait, so he's been _guessing_ he can do this? "I do have my own faith — not as strong or as clear as yours, but something of my own. And … it would help if … I think it would help if — if you could try to …"

He swallows. He's shaking.

"I know you don't trust me. I know you — you hate me, and th-that's fair, I don't blame you. I'm s-sorry. I'm so, so sorry …"

Dr. Sanders wraps his arms tightly around older-him, voice urgent. Panicked. "No, don't. Jonathan. _Jonathan_. Don't do this, not now —"

But he's starting to _fade_ as older-him starts to break apart.


	8. School

Jonathan wishes he knew how to do that whistle Lt. Ciccone did earlier. He resorts to the next best thing: shouting. "Stop, _stop_ , _STOP_! I don't hate you. I don't hate you!"

It's not working, it's not _working_ , older-him is still curling in on himself, Dr. Sanders is still going —

"Don't you _dare_ abandon me here!"

And maybe because he's a "kid", or maybe because they fear being abandoned, or maybe both, _that_ works. Dr. Sanders stops fading and then, after a moment, starts to firm up again. Older-him is still. Paused.

"I know I'm just a kid to you, but stay here and listen to me! Ugh, we're so bad at this. I don't hate you. I resented you for a while, yeah. I was upset and lost and so disappointed and —" he sighs shakily "— and I'm definitely old enough to know better, but sometimes when you're a kid it feels easier to just think you hate someone. But I didn't really hate you. I don't."

Older-him starts to shake his head a little.

"I _don't_ ," Jonathan insists. "And you say you don't hurt kids, but I try not to hurt _anyone_ , and I _kept hurting you_. Over and over and over, because … because I get so mad at myself sometimes, and then you were there, and I guess that was just an easier way to do it, since you _are_ me. But you kept protecting me, over and over, even though I kept hurting you, and then you just made a _mistake_. Because you thought I started the … the erasing thing."

Jonathan doesn't quite know the full scope of that, and he knows he doesn't want to. Because he knows how he felt when Detective Smith erased the stick figure, and when older-him kept showing him hollow symbols, and when he stopped to notice just how _empty_ the space around them kept being when neither of them did anything about it.

"I don't know if you thought it was actually me or a version of us from a little earlier, but you thought it was pretty new, didn't you? You thought I could fight all that bad stuff off. You couldn't see how much I _couldn't_ until too late, could you? And you thought if I could get mad enough, it would help me fight. You … you were trying to _help_ , like when Chris taught me to fight, or when we both tried to teach Jamie."

Trying to teach Jamie went horribly, so many times. It wasn't anything like what happened here, but Jonathan knows exactly what those despairing attempts to say _I was just trying to help_ felt like from the other side.

"You didn't hurt a kid," Jonathan tells his older self. "I'm not an actual kid, first of all. I'm seventeen and I'm a magically reconstructed version of you. And second … you've, I've … we've been hurting … ourself? … for a long time."

Jonathan's older self —

No.

Jonathan has manners. He's been far too disrespectful for far too long about this, just because he's been dealing with another version of himself.

He can't think of the older version of himself as _Jonathan_ , because that's way too confusing, even if it's accurate. He could use _Jack_ or _Jon_ , but those aren't fair here. He's certainly not going to think of himself as _Jonny_.

But there's another option, and as a nominal minor, Jonathan can certainly have the manners to use it.

_Detective Davis_ is listening, maybe not fully convinced but not collapsing in on himself and maybe even looking just a little less sickly. Dr. Sanders is fully back, stroking his hair once more.

"When Detective Smith asked, I told her no one was hurting me, but I was wrong. And I knew I'd hurt myself, but I thought it was only once, by accident, and I was wrong about that, too. I just … the people who hurt me first didn't mean to. They didn't even know they were. And then I … I just took over for them, so they didn't have to bother. I just didn't know that was what I was _doing_. Can … can I show you something?"

Detective Davis doesn't seem to know what he means.

"I don't want to try to change this place, because I _keep breaking stuff_ , but I want to show you something I remember. Just the very first one that comes to mind."

Detective Davis considers that for a few seconds. "The television," he says finally. "Take the remote and concentrate. That should be enough."

Jonathan moves around to the side of the coffee table, not quite daring to move any closer to Detective Davis than that. The remote is on the coffee table. The TV back home doesn't have a remote, but Paul's TV does, so Jonathan has some idea how they work. This one is both a lot more sleek and a lot more complicated.

But as Detective Davis indicated, once he picks it up and concentrates, the TV turns on. The golden light from outside dims in compensation but doesn't go out completely.

The memory shapes itself oddly on the television, shifting to look like one of those Afterschool Specials. Jonathan just focuses on remembering accurately, because he doesn't want it to turn into a _telenovela_.

A younger version of Jonathan is there, sitting at his desk, hands folded to try to control their need to move, feet knocking lightly together because he has trouble remembering to sit still for very long. He's in his first year of Spanish. Class ends and the students file out, but the teacher calls younger-Jonathan to stay. Younger-Jonathan does, of course, perfectly polite and respectful. His eyes are shadowed, if you know what to look for.

The teacher mentions her essay contest, and for just a moment younger-Jonathan brightens slightly in by-then-mockably-foolish hope. The teacher predictably tells him his wasn't any of the top submissions, and that ridiculous hope dies, but she pulls out his essay and calls attention to a few passages. She gives him a clearly handmade document declaring an honorable mention, as well as a book of poems to study.

Younger-Jonathan treats the piece of paper like a presidential declaration, storing it in his binder with loving care. He goes home from school, does his homework, and dutifully begins studying the book of poems. He spends a time-lapsed hour or so struggling through each one he reads, laboriously sounding them out multiple times so he can turn them into something he can _hear_ properly.

Then he closes the book.

Then he opens his binder, removes the paper, and sets it squarely on the desk. He closes the binder and puts that away.

Then he picks up the paper and tears it carefully in half, then does the same to each of those halves, and then again, until he can't tear any of the pieces any smaller, only pausing occasionally to wipe his face with his sleeve. Then he uses his fingernails to render each of those pieces into confetti-sized bits. His sheer, determined _thoroughness_ is honestly a little frightening.

Then he carefully, methodically gathers each bit of paper, carries them to the bathroom, and flushes them down the toilet.

And then he goes down to dinner, where no one notices his slightly puffy eyes, or that he doesn't say a single word after grace.

"She meant to inspire you," Dr. Sanders says. He's frowning, puzzled. "She clearly thought you had promise. She assumed you would understand. She can't have known you didn't, can she?"

Jonathan is confused. "Don't you know? _I_ figured this one out, eventually. Too late." Though … when _did_ he figure this out?

"I'm speaking for myself now," Detective Davis says. "So the simulated psychic … link had to go."

Jonathan knows exactly what that little pause was. " _Synch_ works," he points out. "It's not the usual phrase, but it's still accurate, and it's not too artificial." Well, it is awkward, but it should still be okay.

And Detective Davis smiles a little. Because that's a tiny game they play with themselves on occasion, seeing if they can build alliterative phrases on the fly, but purposely not forcing it.

Emma did that kind of thing, with her forded fjords, and apparently she's spent a lot of time with Detective Davis. Jonathan is certain that most of her … ha, willful weirdness ... is her own, but he wonders whether any bits of it were learned.

"I could've gone on with _subsequently suffered_ , I guess," Detective Davis points out, "but …"

"The whole thing is a mouthful, yeah," Jonathan agrees.

Dr. Sanders, now representing only his own real-world counterpart, is watching them fondly.

"I didn't know it was supposed to be inspiration," Jonathan tells him. "All I knew how to do was look at my work and grades, and look at the correct answers, and see how much I got wrong. And … and learn from that exactly how much of a _failure_ I was."

"I was never good at essays to start with," Detective Davis continues, "and classroom Spanish was honestly all wrong for me, but I was _trying_ to capture what I heard sometimes. If I could have stuck with that, I probably would have done better overall. But in that moment, I felt like I was being slapped down for having the audacity to think there was anything for me to find, when it wasn't an explicit, graded lesson."

"It felt like she gave me a book of real poetry so I could see how good the little things I'd done _weren't_ in comparison, once I could start to hear some of how it was supposed to sound. Like … like she wanted me to know that if she had been grading me for that, I would have failed."

"Which made a hand-drawn certificate feel less like an extra, caring touch, and more like … sarcasm. _Mockery_."

This next part seems so _clear_ now. "So I stopped trying," Jonathan says. "I was very careful to use plain language from then on. I didn't dare try to play with it. And I always had a really hard time with the poetry units."

Jonathan is pretty sure he hasn't realized that so fully before this moment.

'You're right," he tells Detective Davis, a little uneasily. "This place _is_ a riot."

"And no one ever followed up?" Dr. Sanders asks.

"I gave the book back and said I didn't understand it," Jonathan says. "Which I didn't, honestly. Most of that stuff was _way_ over my head."

"And when I didn't show more signs of promise quickly, she probably just wrote it off as a one-time thing," Detective Davis says. "It never occurred to me to ask what she really meant, because I honestly thought I knew and didn't want to have to hear it. And I was … so easy to lose track of."

Dr. Sanders gathers Detective Davis into his arms and kisses the side of his head. "On behalf of my entire profession, I apologize. I'm sorry, love. I'm so very sorry. That school was _all wrong_ for you."

"Hey," Jonathan protests. "St. C's is a great school."

"It is an academically strong school," Dr. Sanders agrees. "It's well-suited for a specific learning style. Unfortunately, it doesn't — or at least didn't, in your time — account for the fact that not everyone learns in the same one way."

"But … what other way would there be?" Jonathan asks, honestly confused.

Detective Davis gets a huge smile at that, for some reason. "Oh boy. You poked the bear."

Dr. Sanders squeezes him once more and releases him. "Hush, you." He looks back at Jonathan. "What would you think of a school that had _no books_?"

Confused, that's what. "How would you study?"

"You would talk to people. You would go outside to study plants and animals, or you would go to parks or zoos, and you would ask questions, and people who knew their subjects would answer you. You would go to museums for other topics, or you would go to government offices. You would go to all sorts of places that _use_ the information you're trying to learn. The people in all those places would make sure to tell you everything they thought you needed to know, and they would keep discussing it with you until they were sure you understood. You would touch things. You would take machines apart with supervision and learn how they fit together. You would have real conversations in other languages, instead of practicing _puis-je tailler mon crayon_ and _où est la bibliothèque_ in an artificial context."

"That sounds … nice?" Jonathan ventures. "But it's not _school_."

"It _is_ , in some places," Dr. Sanders tells him. "How did you learn your prayers? I'm going to go out on a limb and presume it wasn't by reading them. You listened and memorized, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir," Jonathan says slowly. Of course he did.

"Memorization is pedagogically … _uncool_ at the moment, but it has its place and its uses. Your school _did_ use memorization as a tool, far more extensively than schools today do, and that's one of the few favors it did you. Aural memorization happens to suit you, as a starting point you then build from. You don't just recite your prayers by rote. You did _learn_ them, in the way that worked _for you_."

"Ask me how many times I've heard versions of this lecture, for example," Detective Davis says, still smiling. "And you probably think _uncool_ was my substitution for something more complex, but I promise you it wasn't."

They're grinning at each other, something private shared.

"Ugh, don't get all _sappy_ ," Jonathan tells them.

Their smiles fade. The golden light dims further.

"Not like that," Jonathan says hastily. "Yeah, that whole thing … I'm still not sure about it, because there's only so much I can deal with at one time. But I just mean — it's like watching Mom and Dad get all sappy with each other. I'm a teenager. I don't want to have to _see_ any of that shmoopy stuff."

Detective Davis looks unconvinced, and he's starting to close himself off, but then he winces. "It's not just being a teenager, or even the other thing. Because Katie and Dan."

Jonathan makes a face. " _Ew_ , yes, not —"

"— thinking about that," Detective Davis finishes with him. They share a look of perfect understanding. The light gradually brightens back to where it originally was.

The television is off again. "That wasn't the first time. It's just the first one I thought of," Jonathan says. He's not going to try to change this place at all, even for something so innocuous, but mental manipulations of the environment aren't the only way to communicate.

Darn, he could've used _milieu_ for _environment_ there.

Anyway. He loops his finger through the air, indicating a circle around the room. "Whooshing sound, music, Billy Joel talking about old people." Detective Davis huffs a tiny laugh at that. "It didn't start with me, either."

Detective Davis sighs. "I know. That's actually something I've been working on for the past couple of days. It started long, long before you. Being the first plain kid after two pretty ones, of all the petty things to start with —"

"Wait." Jonathan stares at him. "Seriously?"

"Seriously." Detective Davis is clearly irritated, but it's also clearly about the subject rather than about Jonathan. "Mom usually presented us in order, remember?" He looks down at an imaginary child, clearly delighted. "So people would coo over Mary Ellen, and then coo over Chris, and then …" He lets his expression fall, slightly exaggerated but only slightly, in a way that looks _way_ too familiar.

It's not repulsion or anything, just a mild disappointment. The let-down of someone _prepared_ to coo but finding no reason to. The look that comes right before something forced and artificial.

"People don't expect kids to notice," he says. "I don't know, maybe most kids don't, but we did."

The face he made probably wasn't all that obvious, when Jonathan thinks about it. He knew Jonathan would understand, even if he did play it up a little, like he wasn't _entirely_ sure. Or maybe thought Jonathan wouldn't be as good at noticing as he is yet.

Jonathan can usually tell what people are really thinking, just from the faces they make, and it took him a long time to realize that most people honestly don't seem to notice the same things he does. No one _ever_ really looks at him, but … they don't even seem to look at each other that much, honestly. Not properly.

"We didn't know _why_ people always looked at us that way back then, just that they did," Detective Davis says. "Just that we were always a disappointment. And if it was _just_ that, we probably would have ended up just forgetting about it, except once we weren't the only plain one anymore, Chris was already enchanting people and Mary Ellen was really starting to shine, and we didn't have anything. And then we ended up being the only ordinary kid in the middle of four gifted ones."

He sighs a little and then shrugs.

"Being so disappointingly _average_ , being so … almost pathologically attuned to how people reacted to us, being inclined to go quiet when upset, being just generally inconspicuous anyway … we were doomed pretty early. No big, dramatic origin story. Just the constant drip of never being good enough and the unfortunate tendency to work that into a feedback loop."

Dr. Sanders is frowning. "The label 'gifted'—"

Detective Davis rolls his eyes. "Not now, light of my life." Jonathan would be grossed out by that, except it's clearly meant to be over-the-top and silly. "I am aware of your position on the subject. I'm not there yet. I may never be there, but I'm certainly not there yet."

Dr. Sanders looks put out but yields. "As you wish, blossom breath." Detective Davis huffs at that, clearly taken at least a little by surprise, and Dr. Sanders smirks a bit. "Long story," he tells Jonathan.

"How do you do that?" Jonathan asks Detective Davis. "How can he surprise you, if you made him? How — how come all the people you make here are so much more real?"

His own versions of people have been … okay, but they just seem so much more _simple_ in comparison.

"Oh. Just … experience, I guess. I've had a lot longer to get to know everyone. I've been making this place, and this very silly person over here, for a very long time. And … maybe I just _need_ them to be real more than you do. It matters to me, a lot."

He did make some of his people act in unreal-for-them ways, like when he took everyone over back in the kitchen or when he made his work colleagues stand in for other cops. But that fits, too, because he made it _really_ fake when he did, like he needed that separation.

"All that extra experience is why I messed up with you, I think," Detective Davis says. "It feels like it's been forever since it started for you, I know, but the time between us is almost twice your age. You're a lot closer to where we started than I am. I thought that would be enough. I thought … I told myself I thought it would help you."

He looks a little shaky again, but he's been steadily looking less ill, so gradually that Jonathan only really _notices_ it now.

"I kept pushing at you," Jonathan points out. "That must have made it really hard to concentrate. And you thought I hated you, and all you did was try to get me to use that. We … we _both_ keep punishing _you_. That's not fair."

Detective Davis considers that. "We're ... pretty messed up."

"... Yeah."

"But … it's not really all in one direction. I've been blaming you for _so_ much, for _everything_ , even though I know pretty much none of it is your fault. I'm sorry for that. I've had plenty of time to fix things since I was you. I never felt like I could, but the things that stopped me stopped you, too. And even so, you still tried to take my place — don't think I missed that. Which is probably messed up in a whole different way, but … we're doing our best."

He's right. He said it way back when this started: _I'm not perfect, but I'm trying_. That's both of them. "Yeah."

And with that realization, it feels like something _shifts_ somewhere. Not anything bad, just … something different.


	9. You

The light coming in through the windows shifts slightly, too, turning just a little more orange. Detective Davis says, "It's getting late." Dr. Sanders takes some papers and a pen from his satchel and starts writing something. He's left-handed, which makes it easy for him to work and keep touching Detective Davis at the same time.

"It is?" How can he tell, exactly? And what does _late_ mean?

"More or less. Time doesn't really matter here, except it also does." He shrugs a little.

"Are you okay now?" Jonathan asks.

Detective Davis smiles a tiny bit, like he's pleasantly surprised Jonathan thought to ask. "Mostly. I think I will be. I've got some stuff to work on, but that's not really new. Are _you_?"

"Me? I'm fine." Dr. Sanders pauses to give him a dubious look at that, but it's true. "So what now? Do we have to hug it out or something?" he adds, reluctant.

"... Do you want to?" Detective Davis asks, just as wary.

"Honestly, not really, if we don't have to."

"Let's skip that, then," he says, to their mutual relief. Then he frowns. "But I haven't told you about the church."

Jonathan makes himself really think about what he already knows.

He knows how important his faith is to him, _everything_ about it.

He knows whatever went wrong is specific to the church, not his faith as a whole.

He knows how just his first mention of church immediately summoned shattering stained glass, and the _very first thing_ Detective Davis did was move to protect _Jonathan_ , not himself. Before he even knew they were in his head, which means before he knew he _could_.

He knows how _sad_ Detective Davis looks just talking about it, and the way he looks like he's clinging to scraps when he talks about having something of his own. Like someone else put something horrible in his head and maybe it even came close to breaking him and he couldn't get it back out.

And he knows how Detective Davis underlined _you can say no_ in the just-in-case note he wrote, like he remembered just how impossible that is for Jonathan. And maybe it's almost as impossible for him, because he didn't want to talk about the monster guy but he did, just because Jonathan insisted. He begged _not_ to talk about it, but he gave in when Jonathan insisted.

And Jonathan has been the one to insist about this, honestly. And Detective Davis isn't very good at saying no, so he won't, even if he really, _really_ should.

"Was it so you didn't have to worry about living in sin before you got married?" Jonathan asks. Not because he thinks so, but because —

Yeah, that face is _priceless_. "What? No!" Then he realizes Jonathan was just yanking his chain and tries to give him a dirty look but can't really sell it.

"Then don't tell me."

"But you'll still wonder —"

"Maybe. But you had a good reason. You're me plus time, and I wouldn't do that without a _really_ good reason. And it still hurts you, a little, even though you say it doesn't. So you didn't do it just for fun, or just because it was easier. Maybe it's not the right conclusion, but it's _a_ conclusion, and I'm okay with it. I really do need my faith and everything that goes with it, and you want me to keep that, and … I know there really are things I'm happier not knowing. I think this is one of them. Don't tell me."

Detective Davis looks torn between doubt and relief. "If … if you're _sure_." Dr. Sanders looks concerned, but not like he actually disapproves, even though he's a teacher.

"I'm sure. But … do you know what happens to me now?"

"I honestly have no idea. I've been assuming that you're just part of me and will … sort of slot back into place somehow? But I don't actually know for sure how _I_ leave. I mean, I know how I usually do from here, but I don't know if that would work now, and I don't want to just disappear on you — again — if it works. I know it's getting late, but I don't know how I know that or what it means. I don't know if we'll recombine, or if we'll remain separate, or if you're just a dream, or if you'll be stuck rattling around in here when I go, or _anything_."

"This is just like that last night at Katie's," Jonathan mutters. And then he adds, "It's not your fault," when he sees Detective Davis's expression at that.

"Then whose is it?" Detective Davis asks, with a polite stubbornness Jonathan knows very well. "Best guess is that this is _my_ head."

"It's the fault of the twerp who zapped you," Jonathan says, because that's easy. Dr. Sanders chuckles.

"That's fair," Detective Davis admits. "Mark, my dearest, my apple tree —"

Jonathan makes a face because even just for being silly, that's a lot. "Eww."

"— what exactly are you writing over there?"

Dr. Sanders pauses again in his writing, which does look pretty extensive at this point. "You usually process what happens here as a dream or daydream, but you won't be able to let yourself remember all of this properly when you leave this time. Repression is the biggest tool in your toolbox —"

Detective Davis coughs and Dr. Sanders goes a bit pink and Jonathan makes very dramatic gagging noises. Old people are _so gross_ sometimes.

"— _and so_ , regardless of my opinion of it generally, I recognize its specific utility to you. You've been retraumatized in ways you're really not prepared to handle consciously. On the other hand, you've made progress you deserve to keep. I'm trying to capture the latter in a record for you."

"A … written … record," Detective Davis notes. "Because … I'm such a big reader."

"No, but this is how _I_ record information. I don't know how to put it in a format that actually works well for you. It's not as if we have an audiobook recording suite here, or that either of us is in the habit of narrating those — although, come to think of it, that might be something for you to look into someday. I don't know how you would process something like an audiobook conceptually, either."

"What about pictures?" Jonathan asks. "We're pretty good with pictures." He bites his lip, uneasy. Did that sound like bragging? Because he's definitely not bragging-good.

But Dr. Sanders smiles at him. "You are. Unfortunately, I'm _not_. I have been informed that even my stick figures are tragic."

"They are," Detective Davis confirms. "I'm not sure how he manages it, honestly, but they really are."

"I could help?" Jonathan's fingers start playing with the edge of his pocket, because he's suddenly nervous. "You could say what to draw, and then I could draw it. Or we could, both of us. I mean, I'm not as good as —"

But this isn't a competition. Jamie isn't even here, and Jonathan doesn't have to compare himself to anyone. This would just be for himself, in a way.

And come on. He's better than tragic stick figures. "I'm good enough."

And he immediately wants to say _anything else_ to soften or qualify or just deny what he said, because it sounds like _such_ an Afterschool Special, and Detective Davis looks embarrassed on his behalf. But … but he also looks like he kind of needed to hear it, and Dr. Sanders looks so _approving_ , and … maybe he should just leave it alone.

But that doesn't mean they need to keep thinking about it. "Do you have stuff to draw with?" This place is _very_ organized, and Jonathan deeply appreciates that, but he doesn't know where anything is and it's not like he could just go poking around in someone else's stuff anyway.

"I don't usually bother — that's not what this place is for — but yeah." The coffee table actually has a wide, shallow drawer. Detective Davis pulls that open. He withdraws a thick stack of fairly plain but sturdy paper and then, after brief consideration, a box of colored pencils. He holds that up. "This do?"

"Fine with me." They seem well suited to this.

Jonathan doesn't feel comfortable joining the two men on the couch, and working at that angle would be a little awkward anyway. So he just sits on the floor. He's at the end of the coffee table, so the height and angle and amount of space are good for this.

They discuss and agree on a few initial images, and Jonathan starts working on his assigned picture. "What did you mean about classroom Spanish?" he asks as he draws.

Detective Davis shifts into Spanish to answer. "Classroom languages are very book-centered and regular. They focus on conjugations and consistency. Ours did, anyway. That works for Latin, but it just made Spanish seem a little _plastic_."

Jonathan knows exactly what he means. People just don't _talk_ the way everything sounds in class. Well, that's not quite fair. Dr. Sanders kind of does, really, and maybe that sort of careful precision is good for businesspeople or something. But most people don't sound like that.

And now he really is jealous, because Detective Davis's Spanish sounds so much more _real_. "How did you make your Spanish better?" he asks, and he winces a bit at how much more artificial his sounds.

Detective Davis looks at him a little oddly, but he says, "I just spent a lot of time listening to people after I graduated. I run into a lot of Spanish in my job. Right now, you don't quite let yourself _listen_ all the way when you hear people speaking Spanish around the neighborhood, because you worry — no, you _know_ it'll make you lose points in class."

That makes sense. "What's your accent? It definitely doesn't sound like class did."

Detective Davis smiles slightly and switches to an exaggerated Southie accent to say, "Boston." Then he goes back into Spanish. "It's a little mixed up, I know. There's not nearly as much Spain-Spanish as class wanted us to use, or as much Mexican-Spanish as our teachers usually had. There's a lot more Puerto Rican and Dominican, some Central American ones, a few others. And Boston really does add its own influence over time. I'm better at being consistent when I'm talking with someone else, but I don't really have a model to stick to right now." He hesitates and then adds, "You can use informal-you with me, you know."

Because he's been using informal-you, of course, and he probably just thinks it counts as talking to himself, more or less.

"No, I can't," Jonathan tells him, but nicely. _You_ can be so complicated sometimes, but it isn't now. "You're an adult and I'm not, and I'm also not a baby. I have manners — _we_ have manners. I'm informal-you, and you're formal-you."

Considering their relative ages, Jonathan really would only use informal-you to show contempt for Detective Davis. Who has to know that.

Who seems surprised Jonathan is choosing not to. Because he obviously remembers how Jonathan thought about him sometimes, back before all this. And even though he knows now that Jonathan doesn't hate him, maybe he doesn't entirely believe it. They really are kind of messed up.

Detective Davis clearly doesn't know whether to feel flattered or uneasy or grateful, so Jonathan purposely distracts him by asking about informal-plural-you from Spain-Spanish, and teases him for turning out to actually be _rusty_ at using it, and they both carefully leave the other subject alone.

Detective Davis demonstrates what he knows about the differences between various dialects — he points out that he's no expert because he hasn't lived in those places and doesn't speak any of them regularly, but he has noticed a few distinctions. He tries to get Jonathan to _relax_ his own accent a little, but that's _hard_. Listening's a lot easier, though, and he finds he can nudge his accent just a bit closer to what he's hearing, something rough and slightly imperfect and _real_.

Dr. Sanders is still making more notes, probably so he can make more picture suggestions from them later. He puts a couple of his papers on the coffee table, tossing them lightly rather than bothering to lean all the way forward. Without a pause in their conversation, automatically, Detective Davis pauses his sketching to reach over and square the papers with each other and with the edge of the table.

He still finishes his sketch first, so Jonathan hastily wraps up the last bit of his. Even though it's not a competition. Detective Davis then sits back a bit to evaluate them together.

He looks dissatisfied. And sure, Jonathan's style is rougher and less detailed, but he's had so much less practice —

"My job has not done my style any favors," he mutters.

Oh. His style is more _gritty_ , maybe, but that just makes it look more sophisticated.

"Not knowing Spanish, I have no idea what you just said," Dr. Sanders notes, "but by your expressions, I have my suspicions. If the two of you start a no-mine's-worse argument, I will roll up your drawings and thwap you with them until you give in and admit that they're both perfectly fine."

Detective Davis rolls his eyes a little and switches back to English. "Corporal punishment, Dr. Sanders? I don't even know you anymore. Also, since when are you an art critic?"

Jonathan takes the two drawings and creates a little stack with them, far enough to be out of the way. Detective Davis watches him but then just smiles a little when he sees that Jonathan knows to square them. Because, hi, they're still the same person. "We've been rude, Dr. Sanders," Jonathan says. "I'm sorry. We can stick to English. Unless there are other languages you know?"

Detective Davis gets a funny look on his face, like he accidentally bit into a lemon and doesn't want anyone to notice.

"Define 'know'," Dr. Sanders says. "I pretty much exhausted what I retained of my high school French with those two phrases earlier. I know scientific terminology from Latin and, to a far smaller extent, from German, but those are only any good to me when I'm reading or when I'm teaching science. I know _some_ Hebrew and Yiddish, again mostly for reading. I don't know them nearly as well as I'd like for speaking, since I started them far too late and I really don't have an ear for languages anyway. Honestly, I'm far too grounded in English. You can stop biting your tongue now, my darling dearest turtle-dove."

They're messing with him. These over-the-top endearments are _totally_ just to mess with Jonathan. Blech.

"I didn't say anything," Detective Davis says virtuously. He intercepts Dr. Sanders's next paper and adds it neatly to the stack. Because of the way they're sitting next to each other, he doesn't seem to notice the glance Dr. Sanders gives him at that. "So! Next assignment."

They discuss and lay out their plans and then go back to drawing. Jonathan asks about Dr. Sanders's accent, because it's weird underneath an attempt to be neutral, but it's _consistently_ weird.

Dr. Sanders starts explaining about being originally from New Orleans but moving to coastal Mississippi when he was really little, and how he never liked any of the accents in either place. He adds another page to his stack, even though he's not really writing much since he's talking, and Detective Davis again straightens it automatically.

Dr. Sanders suggests, somewhat reluctantly, that Detective Davis demonstrate his mother's accent, since he can't actually speak it accurately himself anymore. So Detective Davis does as they digress a bit about Mrs. Sanders's accent, and how she wants Detective Davis to call her by her first name, and how that clearly isn't something he'll ever actually do because he still has manners. Apparently Katie's kids consider her a sort of honorary grandmother and call her "Sandmom", which is honestly pretty excellent, and Detective Davis will teasingly call her that when he's cornered.

And the accent sounds pretty enough, but Dr. Sanders adds another page, even though he didn't write anything this time, and he frowns when Detective Davis straightens it.

Jonathan lowers his head a little to look like he's paying _tons_ of attention to his sketching, because something's going on here and he doesn't understand what it is.

They talk about how Dr. Sanders used national news and British shows on PBS to try to change his own accent, and another blank page gets added and straightened. Tulane for college and another page. Rudimentary study of Hebrew and Yiddish there and another page. Philadelphia for grad school and another page. More extensive Hebrew-and-Yiddish exposure while in Philadelphia and —

— and Dr. Sanders takes what's left of his sheaf of paper and deliberately drops it on the floor, all over his feet, holding it by the edge and releasing pressure gradually so the pages flutter and spread out on the way.

Detective Davis kind of twitches and goes very still.

That wasn't a flinch. If he had flinched, Jonathan would be _furious_ right now, but it wasn't, so he's not.

Yet.

But he _doesn't understand_ , and he watches very carefully.

"We need to talk about this," Dr. Sanders says.

"No," Detective Davis says, closing his eyes, "we don't."

The papers are still on the floor. They seem to be making this place … buzz, somehow, very very slightly, below the edge of hearing.

"Yes, we do," Dr. Sanders insists. "I can't know what you won't tell me, and it's _hurting you_."

Jonathan's pencil snaps.


	10. Know Thyself

"You're scaring the children, _darling_ ," Detective Davis says through his teeth. He makes himself take a deep breath, opens his eyes, and tells Jonathan, "It's not what you're thinking. He's just being dramatic about the natural adjustments that are necessary when a … slightly untidy person and a neat —"

"A clutter conqueror," Dr. Sanders says firmly. Jonathan can't get his knee to stop bouncing.

"A _neat freak_ ," Detective Davis insists, "live together."

Dr. Sanders mutters, "Unnecessarily pejorative."

"Can't you just pick up after, then?" Jonathan asks. He feels so _jittery_ and that buzzing is not helping anything. "Like I do with Chris?"

"I do," Detective Davis says. "And it's _absolutely fine_."

"It is _not_ , because you've been doing it every single day for _fifteen years_ , and you've never once asked me to try. Not once."

That doesn't seem like such a big deal. Jonathan has been picking up after Chris as long as he can remember, which means it's probably been almost as long as that.

He did kind of hope he'd eventually get a break from it, though. And why can't he sit even a little bit still anymore?

"It's not every day, and I have too asked."

And that _buzzing_ needs to _stop_.

"Forgive me for not accounting for the occasional days I've been away or you've been on soul-crushing undercover assignments. Mentioning approximately once a _year_ that I could find things more easily if I put them away properly in the first place isn't even passive-aggressive, Jonathan." He means Detective Davis, not the younger Jonathan, who feels like he's about to vibrate out of his skin. "It's just _passive_. If I haven't picked up the hint in _fifteen years_ , I clearly am never going to."

"Which is _fine_ because I can just —"

"Please can I pick up the papers?" Jonathan blurts. The two of them are in the way so he has to ask first but if he could just make that buzzing stop maybe he could _think_ for half a second. "Please?"

Dr. Sanders takes one look at his expression and hastily pushes himself forward so he can grab the papers from the floor. He shoves them at Detective Davis for collection, and then once he's gotten them all, Detective Davis helps him sit back up straight before turning his attention to fixing the papers themselves into something more orderly. Just getting them off the floor was enough to make the wretched buzzing quit, though.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Sanders tells Jonathan, who is a little busy _not_ flopping back on the floor in relief because he'd just brain himself on a bookcase if he tried. "I didn't realize you would be affected, too. I didn't think. Are you all right?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry. Thank you."

Dr. Sanders then looks over at Detective Davis, his mouth going tight. "You were saying it doesn't hurt you?"

"It didn't really _hurt_ ," Jonathan says quickly, because he doesn't want to go through _that_ whole thing again and he doesn't like Detective Davis's expression. "I just couldn't _think_ , because of the buzzing."

Dr. Sanders doesn't seem to know what he means, but Detective Davis winces very slightly.

"A few papers don't usually bother me that much," Jonathan points out. He'd never survive high school if they did. "Why was it so bad?"

"Because …" Detective Davis sighs. "The world is messy, and that's mostly fine, right? Nature is _supposed_ to be messy, so that doesn't bug us. Same with language. People-stuff is more complicated — kids make messes and they're supposed to, you know? But stuff that _should_ be orderly, like books and papers, or things that should be put away and just aren't … it's … distracting. Having that stuff back in order helps. I don't mean sterility, that's terrible —"

Sterility is that monster place, where Jonathan instinctively tried to pull in nature just as a contrast. Sterility is hospitals.

"— but just order, it's … better. All of that doesn't really matter out there, out in the world, in schools and crime scenes and squad rooms, but it's all just a little annoying, a little distracting. And then … when it's here, when it's _home_ , when it's where I'm supposed to be able to relax, messiness won't quite _let_ me, so it bothers me more here. And … I'm stretched pretty thin right now, and that makes it get to me a lot faster and have a lot more effect when it does. And the arguing probably made it worse. So it's — it's because of me. I'm sorry."

Jonathan checked the feel of this place earlier, making sure there were no breaches, making sure the lock was secure. There weren't, and it was, and all of that is still true. But he's only just realizing that the walls … they're not really as thick as they ought to be. They're so, so thin. Intact, but fragile, like an eggshell.

"This place is a psychic representation," Dr. Sanders says, but he's talking to Detective Davis rather than Jonathan. "You are worn _graphene_ -thin at the moment. You had your entire carefully managed emotional landscape stirred around wholesale by an overcurious child — no offense — and you immediately went _back to work_ because you didn't think you could ask for a single day off after that."

"I _couldn't_ ," Detective Davis protests. "The entire department —"

"Will not fall apart if it has to do without you for _one day_. Yes, even now. Your lieutenant even confirmed that —"

"A day off wouldn't have helped, though," Jonathan interjects. Dr. Sanders looks surprised, but that's just because he doesn't really seem to understand how they handle stuff. "Doing a bunch of nothing on a school day, or a work day? That's honestly kind of harder."

"Yes, thank you," Detective Davis mutters.

Dr. Sanders sighs. "You need structure. Fine. So come up with a sick-day schedule or something, because you need those, too. Regardless, you went to work, which might help you by giving you structure but which also _hurt_ you because of the role you were making yourself play. Then you finally came home only to find that I hadn't worried about keeping the place clean, which added _yet another stressor_."

"It really wasn't that bad," Detective Davis insists mulishly. Wow, he's a rotten liar, at least right now.

"It was avoidable," Dr. Sanders counters. "I don't know it stresses you. It's entirely possible that, like Emma, I've been misled into thinking it _helps_ you by giving you something to do that you give every appearance of enjoying or, at the very least, not minding. Why are you so determined not to ask me to _try_?"

"Because …" Detective Davis looks miserable. "Because it would hurt _you_ to think you're hurting me, and it's so _unnecessary_ just over me having some bizarre representational _delusion_ that external order controls internal order, and it's not fair to ask you to maintain a housekeeping standard you don't even care about when I can do it just fine and I'm the one who cares, and housework is harder for you and you already do your share anyway. And you're not perfect, I'm sorry, you're not, you actually do try sometimes but you always forget after a day or two, you don't even _notice_ , so then I'd have to fix it anyway, and you'd feel like I was judging you, so you'd get annoyed, and I know it would just be a small thing, but it would happen over and over, and little things add up, and —"

"Jonathan." Dr. Sanders says it quietly, but it somehow works to make that torrent stop. "Is this you asking me for a divorce because of fifteen years of clutter adding up?"

Detective Davis looks like he's just been punched, and Jonathan actually feels the same way. "No," he manages finally, horrified.

"But you really think I would over less?"

And Detective Davis is stuck, because he boxed himself in, and he clearly did think something like that, at least a little. Because they fear abandonment.

"Give me a chance to try, Jonathan. Please. I can't promise you I can maintain _this_ — in all honesty, I can pretty much guarantee I can't maintain this, so please don't get your hopes too high — but I can do better. Even if I can't, I deserve to know it matters. You know that."

Detective Davis puts his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.

"You don't get to take all the pain just to save me from knowing it exists. You don't get to take _unnecessary_ pain just to make my life a little easier, without even letting me know it's happening. You don't get to decide whether I get a choice about trying to be better about picking up after myself. You don't get to take all the bad and hide it from me. That's not how marriage works. You know better."

After a moment, Detective Davis nods, face still covered. He lets himself tip sideways into Dr. Sanders's embrace.

Jonathan firmly looks down at his paper and pays very close attention to his drawing.

This is why all of Detective Davis's people are so real, why he needs them to be. His real-world people love him and take care of him, even when he doesn't know how to let them. And in here, his copies of them do the same thing. They make him hear the things he knows he needs to hear but doesn't know how to let himself accept or believe, and then they keep at him until he finds the way.

If they were any more fake, he would know he's basically just talking to himself, and Jonathan has never known how to convince himself of anything good.

No matter how mostly-real he is, this Dr. Sanders knows he's just a representation. Do all of his people here know that?

Do any of them think they're _actually_ real, even though they know they're not out in the real world? Do any of them just show up, moments before Detective Davis does, not knowing why they're here?

What if …

What if Detective Davis makes his people real because just talking to himself doesn't really work, but maybe he really _needs_ to talk to himself about something anyway? What if he can't just create a copy of himself, because that's no better than talking to a mirror … but then, somehow, a sort-of-separate version of himself got created anyway, and maybe he can't just invent people who don't exist, but he knows how to copy people who do exist — or at least did?

What if he was really messed up when that happened, or _because_ that happened, and he's not always good at letting people help him, but he still needs to talk to them to have any chance at all? What if he comes here, not just to convince himself to talk to them for real, but maybe sometimes to talk to them when he can't reach them otherwise?

What if he's so used to making people realistic that he maybe makes them _too_ realistic, gives them too much power … like being able to control this space at least a little because anyone who is him could? Or, instead, what if he _needed_ a linchpin to hold things together, because he knew he was so messed up and might break apart, and he was afraid it might count as suicide if he tried to fix things anyway even knowing it might break him apart, so he might include enough control to ensure he couldn't unravel all the way?

What if he needed a version of himself he was willing to — was _compelled_ to — protect, when he's usually so, so bad at protecting himself?

Under those conditions, if Jonathan is himself a construct just like this version of Dr. Sanders, would he know?

Would even Detective Davis know?

And ... if he is, what does that mean?

" _Jonny_."

Jonathan glares up at Detective Davis, only to find him looking back with concern. "I'm sorry, I know you don't like being called that, but you weren't responding."

"I was tuning you guys out to give you privacy, and it's confusing when we both have the same name," Jonathan says. Those are not, technically, lies. They also don't explain why he didn't notice which voice was saying his name. "Better get drawing. You're falling behind, old man."

He's definitely taking a risk by saying that, but Detective Davis gets that it's just teasing, so it's okay.

Dr. Sanders frowns. "Doesn't Katie call you _Jonny_?"

"It's okay when it's Katie," they both answer, not quite in synch. Detective Davis adds, "She's good about using it rarely, anyway. It's also okay when Tonya calls me _Jack_. I don't love when anyone else calls me that, but it's a little late to try to change it now. It's tolerable."

"I still can't believe you gave up on our name," Jonathan mutters.

"There's a sort of joke online. 'Pick your battles. No, wait, that's too many, put some back.' I had a lot of things to deal with, and really, as long as people weren't calling me _Jonny_ all the time anymore, I was happy. _Jon_ stands out a lot less than our full name, and not really being noticed is even more useful in my work than it has been for you lately at school. And honestly, it's kind of cool to have a secretly secret name."

Jonathan gives him a look. "Secretly secret."

"It is," Detective Davis insists, with an odd little grin. "I put my real name on _everything_ , but no one ever actually uses it. But Andy and Mark do, because they know it matters to me. So it's my secret name, but since everyone can see it, they don't _know_ it's secret. So, secretly secret."

"You are _so weird_ ," Jonathan marvels.

"Yeah, I actually am," Detective Davis says, his grin going a little crooked. "I come by it honestly. That started a long time ago, too." He goes back to drawing.

Detective Davis was confused when they first met here, which is weird. But maybe that's because he has places for all of his other people, like this place for Mark, but he's not really used to wandering around in his own brain instead of going to those specific places. It doesn't really suggest anything about what Jonathan actually _is_ here.

"Dr. Sanders? Are you always here? I mean, do you stay here alone?"

"I'm here when I'm needed," he says, giving Detective Davis a somewhat sappy smile. "I suppose you could say I don't really exist between those times."

"Then … do you remember things from one time to another? Or are you … new, I guess, each time?"

Detective Davis's sketching hand slows a little. Like he's busy fighting not to tense up.

Dr. Sanders doesn't seem to notice. "I'm not sure how I would know if there's anything I don't remember. I'm not aware of anything missing, and I do remember other times I've been here before. It's ... useful to be able to build on prior conversations."

So either he remembers, or he mostly does and isn't bothered by the rest, if Detective Davis needs him to forget stuff sometimes.

"Do … do you want him to stay?" Detective Davis asks. "I mean … I can't stay here forever. Well, I'm guessing I can't. For all I know, I really did break completely and I'm _just_ here now, but I think I have to plan for that not to be the case. Which means at some point, I'll wake up or stop drifting or … whatever I'm actually doing out there. But … I don't know any way to bring you out _with_ me."

Because when Jonathan took over his life, he probably didn't literally _replace_ Detective Davis, with a whole separate body. Everyone acted like it was the same body, just changed. Which means there's no body for Jonathan to be in, out in the real world.

"Maybe you really will just sort of slot back in. I don't think it's a great idea to assume that, though, because you've _changed_ , and I don't know if you'd … fit, I guess?"

"I've changed?" He just feels like himself. Though … he would, wouldn't he?

Or would he? Does this Dr. Sanders?

"I never saw my future life," Detective Davis points out. "When I was actually your age, I mean. Remembering it happening to you isn't the same at all. I spent all those years _not_ knowing for certain that I couldn't change what I was, and I definitely didn't have anyone telling me that was okay, not until I met Andy. Even if you don't really believe it yet, you've heard it, from people you know you can trust."

Jonathan still really isn't sure about that whole thing, but … yeah. He used to be positive it _wasn't_ okay, and now he's not, because of older-Katie. And Detective Smith, and even Emma.

"You already know that there really is something worse than being alone. You know that you can do better, _will_ do better." He hesitates for just a moment before adding, "Deserve better. And at your age, I certainly never saved anybody. More than just Jamie-from-bullies, I mean," he amends before Jonathan can point that out.

He means saving _him_ , doesn't he? Jonathan isn't sure that should count, really.

But Detective Davis is looking at Jonathan steadily, seriously. He's not falling all over himself with gratitude or anything, but he's not mocking or discounting it himself. He's just letting Jonathan see that he _is_ grateful, maybe in ways he doesn't know how to talk about.

Jonathan manages not to blush. Barely.

"Yes, you've changed. So maybe we aren't the same person anymore. But maybe there's some way to …" Detective Davis laces his fingers together briefly. "Weave us back together somehow. Actually, that kind of sounds like something Dan was talking about once. Maybe I should get him to talk software at me again." He makes a face at that prospect.

Maybe that's worth a try. Jonathan doesn't know for sure what he really is here. He'll just have to wait and see.

"But I can fill this place in a little more, if you want. I could fill in the guest room for you, and some food in the kitchen. And the bathroom, I guess? Just in case?"

Detective Davis hasn't shown any signs of needing to eat here, or drink, or use the bathroom. As if even the version of him here is a construct, more or less, though also one that controls all the rest.

Jonathan considers as he keeps drawing. "You can if you want," he says finally. By the layout, if one of those doors leads to a guest room, then that means there are two bedrooms side-by-side. He's tempted to tease Detective Davis about putting him in the room right next to theirs … but then he thinks a little more about that. Dr. Sanders is just a sort of puppet, so Detective Davis can talk to himself, more or less, which would mean —

Okay, nope, there's something else not to think about. And anyway, that sort of thing wouldn't be what this place is for.

And Detective Davis is watching him suspiciously, as if he knows where Jonathan's brain just went. Ha.

"I think you should just leave the way you normally would," Jonathan continues, "when you're ready. Don't worry about keeping anyone going. You said the space out there comes from me, so I should be able to do stuff to keep busy."

Or he can just not-be, along with Dr. Sanders, depending on what happens if Detective Davis doesn't try to maintain anyone. But only temporarily, just like Dr. Sanders. Temporary is okay.

"And then see if you can figure out how to be less messed up, and … maybe check in on me? Kind … kind of soon, maybe?" Because he doesn't want to be abandoned, if he _does_ end up sticking around. There's only so long he can entertain himself. "Probably not here, actually, because this is your place, but … the park back home. That can be my place."

He's never really had a place all to himself. Nothing like this. But he doesn't like the empty places, and the park … that's probably the closest thing he does have to this feeling.

Both men look concerned, but they consider at length, and Detective Davis finally admits, "I guess that's all I really _can_ do."

They go back to their drawings, and time slides on, the light growing sunset colors ever so gradually.

They aren't drawing a comic book specifically — it would take a long time to plot and lay it out properly, and then lettering all kinds of speech bubbles would just get back to a written record anyway — but they're using similar art styles and selecting vivid scenes. It's all symbolic, really, just a way for Detective Davis's conscious brain to process an edited version of the truth. So it's less that they're drawing specific things from a checklist to tell a coherent story, and more that they're drawing until they feel like they have enough.

They eventually have a nice tall stack of drawings, but something's still not quite right somehow. Then, finally, Jonathan remembers and groans a little in frustration at himself.

He takes the keys from his jacket pocket and hands them over to Detective Davis, who looks surprised and, honestly, a little frustrated at himself, too. The light shifts once more, full sunset now.

Detective Davis takes the stack of drawings and carefully adds his initials to the corner of the top image, and then they're done.

Jonathan stands.

"I have to go back now," Detective Davis says, standing as well. "I'm starting to feel it. I'm sorry. I wish … I'd like some way to bring you out with me."

"I know," Jonathan says. "It's okay." Life has never been what they wished for. But it's not all bad, either, and parts of it are pretty good. All he can do is see what comes next.

"Still no hugging, right?" Detective Davis checks.

"No hugging," Jonathan agrees. But then he puts out his hand.

And Detective Davis smiles, pleased, because _this_ is them. Affectionate with the few people they truly love, but reserved with those they're not quite as sure of, even themselves. Relieved by structure and by gestures of respect, however cautious. Flawed, and failing, and failed by one other, but willing to try again.

They shake hands, and the room fills with warm golden light.

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes (not guaranteed to be exhaustive; please stay safe and ask questions as needed): One homophobic slur. Stress reactions to prior traumas. Descriptions of intimate partner abuse. Emotional self-harm. Sketchy symbolism, dream logic, and disturbing imagery. Dubious reasoning and judgment (and outdated judgmentalism) about various mental health topics, especially suicide. Slangy use/misuse of the term "crazy".


End file.
